


The spaces in between

by opposablethumbs



Series: Spaces [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Everyone's a Good Bro, Everyone's also a jerk, Feelings, M/M, Science Bros, Sleepy Cuddles, Slow Burn, Steve Needs a Hug, Tony Needs a Hug, everybody needs a hug
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-10
Updated: 2016-04-26
Packaged: 2018-06-01 09:59:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 17
Words: 58,278
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6513589
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/opposablethumbs/pseuds/opposablethumbs
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>So much goes unseen, and even in the middle of the storm there can still be moments of peace. These are the spaces in between, when you learn who you are and, maybe, find what you want.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [Расстояние](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11451120) by [Savarna_Scaramouche](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Savarna_Scaramouche/pseuds/Savarna_Scaramouche)



>  
> 
> This was supposed to be a short-ish study set in and around the existing films, to help me find my voice in a new fandom. Turns out, the characters had a lot more to say than I expected.
> 
> Odd-numbered chapters are from Steve's POV, even from Tony's POV.
> 
> Any specific notes are at the start of each chapter.
> 
> Feedback appreciated.

The sleeve of Steve’s suit is torn from elbow to wrist, a dry trickle of blood staining the blue. He swings wide, knocking both his assailant and the man trying to flank him onto their backs, leaving just one standing. 

“Widow, report.”

He hears Natasha breathing heavily. “Got trouble, Cap.”

Steve - because for all SHIELD’s rules, he’s not calling himself Captain America in his own head - nods slightly, dispatches the last of the three goons in a way that guarantees a long and life re-evaluating headache, and turns in an arc to survey the battlefield.

Widow is backed against the wall of a bunker, surrounded by eight assailants. Twice as many lie at her feet, undoubtedly in a slightly worse state than the kid Steve just put down. The ‘trouble’ comes in the form of a flamer-wielding vanguard spitting fire at her.

“Hawkeye,” Steve barks, “Can you clear Widow?”

A grunt over his earpiece sounds an awful lot like Barton. Steve spins, their relative positions mapped in his mind, to where Hawkeye is supposed to be concealed in the tree line. Instead, he sees a writhing anthill of black-suited mercs crawling over a grounded grey and purple figure.

“Hawkeye,” he shouts. Blast it. “Clint!”

Hell. This was supposed to be a recon mission, a routine shakedown for those remaining Avengers not in alternate realms of existence or... Guatemala, if SHIELD’s trace on Doctor Banner is good. It’s just something to keep their precarious status of ‘team’ fluid after some well-deserved downtime. The target is an old cold-war military complex in upstate that was giving off some intermittent heat signatures to the satellites; nothing that any legitimate agency would put claim to. Tony had done a flyover, said there was nothing but crumbling concrete on the surface. Steve wanted to know whether anything was going on beneath it. He hadn’t expected, well, _this_.

“Stark,” Steve calls. “I need an evac on Hawkeye.” For the love of... where is that blasted shellhead? Steve knows getting familiar with each other’s methods is part of the point of the exercise but he hates this, hates having a man under his command that is so darn unpredictable. The two assassins are bad enough with their ‘improvising’, but how is he supposed to co-ordinate a mission, especially one that has gone off-plan, if he doesn’t know where his heavy hitter is and what he’s doing?

Steve is frozen for a fractured second, twisting between Natasha and Clint. Then he’s moving in the only direction he can conscience; towards Romanoff and the flamer. He’s halfway through a summersault designed to put every pound of his mass into a double footed kick to the back of the fire-trooper’s head, when a flash and a rumble precede the heat and concussive force of a huge explosion. The flamer spins, catching Steve’s leg with a gout of fire and Steve hisses as he feels his suit cinder. He still connects and the guy goes down and out, releasing the trigger and giving Natasha the space she needs to take out the rest.

Steve squints into the dazzling distance. The silo that had towered over the complex, and evidently concealed some kind of underground base, lies in ruins. Roils of oily-looking black smoke and glowing shards of metal have cascaded upwards before beginning to fall back on to the battlefield. 

“Stark!” he barks, fear twisting his stomach. “Where the _hell_ are you?”

For his answer, a loud ‘fzt’ on comms is replaced with an even louder burst of Wanda Jackson’s ‘ _Did you miss me_ ’, a song a little after Steve’s time but old-timey enough sounding that he knows it’s aimed at him. 

“Hey, we’re on a mission. I’m Iron Man, remember?” Tony’s deep voice rumbles over the breathy singing. 

A small part of Steve’s mind suggests that Tony actually _does_ refer to himself that way in his inner monologue. “Tell me there wasn’t a nuke down there,” he demands.

“Nope. Just a little SI propriety brand of boom,” comes the reply. Steve grits his teeth but can’t deny the relief he feels as he catches sight of the familiar flash of red and gold, especially as it appears to be cradling a Hawkeye shaped bundle in its arms.

A loud ‘ungh’ and an unpleasant cracking squelch beside him tells Steve that Black Widow has dispatched the last of her assailants and it’s clear that those who have less commitment to whoever their employer is are already beating the retreat. He smiles grimly at Natasha as she wipes her hands down her lean flanks, and turns in time to see Tony land with a wriggling Hawkeye held like a bride about to be taken across the threshold.

“Put me down,” Clint whines. “I’m not a goddam damsel.”

Toney’s mask retracts with a flurry of whirs and metallic clangs. His lopsided smile is a whole nine yards of smug. “You fall outta your nest, baby bird?” he croons.

“Screw you, Stark,” Clint says.

“Promises, promises,” Stark quips. 

Steve rubs his forehead with the back of his hand, where cold sweat has started to make his mask itch.

Natasha bounds over to Clint. “You okay?” she asks, her eyes narrowed and tracking over him. She pokes his arm with a pointed finger.

Clint winces. “’Tis but a flesh wound,” he says.

“Actually, it’s a badly sprained ankle, three cracked ribs and a bruised coccyx,” Stark provides. He shrugs as Natasha frowns at him. “Biometric sensors,” he offers in explanation.

“I fell on my ass,” Clint adds.

Steve takes a deep breath, holds it, and slowly exhales. The sound of a chopper in the distance suggests that the explosion has drawn some attention; could be military, civilian authority or newshounds. Either way, Steve would rather not be there when they arrives.

“Iron man,” he says, carefully re-establishing his presence, “you fly Barton back to base. I want him to get a full medical eval. A-SAP in case you’ve missed anything.” Tony looks like he’s about to say something back, his eyes straying down to the crisped and blackened leg of Steve’s suit and the charred skin beneath. Instead he closes the mask and blasts off with a whoosh of repulsor energy, Clint held securely against his chest.

“You okay, Cap?” Natasha asks, once they are alone.

Steve nods. His leg hurts like hell, but it’ll heal. He squints at a cut over Nat’s left eye; bleeding freely down the contours of her face.  
“Are you?” he asks. 

She shrugs. “I’ll live.”

And Steve knows they will, they’ll all live to fight, and bicker, and hopefully laugh another day. Even Clint with his bruised... ego. But it’s more about luck than strategy, and that’s unacceptable. If this team is to be a team, and stay a team, he needs them to work together.

The helo is closer now, and it’s definitely time to leave. “C’mon, I’ve got the bike stowed half a click east,” he says, jerking his head away from the destruction. He bites back a hiss as his leg protests the brisk clip he sets, and he and Natasha head back to HQ.

****

Steve slouches tiredly in an armchair and watches as Clint, spread across the sofa in the rec room with what appears to be a haemorrhoid cushion under his butt, spoons another half-melted spoonful of pistachio ice cream into his mouth. Steve shakes his head ever-so-slightly.

Clint, despite the pain meds, catches the nuance with his sharp eyes and offers a gloopy spoon towards him. “You want some?” he asks.

Steve holds up a hand. “I’m okay. I’ve just never seen a grown man pack away half a gallon of ice cream before,” he says.

Clint belches surprisingly delicately. “Doctor’s orders,” he says. He proffers the spoon one more time before shrugging and dribbling it into his open mouth.

“Really,” says Steve, “Doc Langston told you to eat enough ice cream to make you sick?”

Clint snorted. “Not Langston. Woman’s got no bedside manner, or taste in ice cream. Doc Flynn, back when I was a kid. He said, ‘you get sick, ice cream makes you better’. Funnily enough, I ate ice cream, I always got better.”

“You can’t argue with that kinda logic,” Steve agrees. He winces as attempting to cross his legs reminds him of his own injury.

“You have that looked at?” Clint asks, his brow coming together in a wrinkle.

“No need. It’s healing.” And it is; only three hours have passed but already the blistered skin has faded to a light pink. 

“Damn, you sure there’s none of that serum of yours left lying around? My ass is _really_ sore.”

Natasha walks in at that, rolling her eyes but ruffling Clint’s hair as she passes in a fond way. She has some butterfly stitches closing the wound over her eye and a purpling bruise has started to make is presence known on her cheekbone. “So is eating all that ice cream your way of putting some extra padding on it for next time?”

“Are you calling me fat?” Clint asks, mock hurt in his voice. “Cap, Nat’s calling me fat.” He lifts his legs to let her sit down and then offers her the spoon, just as he did to Steve. Natasha accepts it without hesitation.

Steve watches them joke with each other, before settling into a comfortable peace. It’s nice, Steve thinks. A few months ago, straight after New York, people would shut up and sit up straight when ‘Captain America’ walked into the room. Even these two goofs, aka SHIELD’s two most dangerous covert operatives, would hold their tongues, or at least whisper their quips. But recently, things have started to relax. Get lax, some might say. The Captain of a few months ago would have known exactly where everyone was at that complex, would have seen the trouble coming for them because he didn’t trust them to see it themselves. With familiarity came complacency, and while that was nice in some ways, it was also dangerous. The two battered and bruised team-members before him are a testament to that. Suddenly, the rec room is overly small, hot and Steve needs to be somewhere else.

Two pairs of sharp, questioning eyes turn to him as he gets to his feet just a little too quickly. Damn it. All stood up and nowhere to go. “I, uh, I’m hitting the gym,” he says. Clint seems to accept this, but Natasha’s gaze turns thoughtful. Mercifully, she doesn’t say any of the things that she appears to be considering. 

Steve gets half way down the hall before he hears either of them speak: Clint, as it happens. “Oh, Nat, turn it over. I hate the History Channel.”

****

He knows this. It feels good. Left, right. Keep your hand loose. Power comes from the opposite shoulder. The trickle of sweat down his nose is nothing, the burn across his back and in his chest is meaningless. Left. Left, right. Right. 

_“Grab my hand!”_

Grey eyes on his, pain in them. Bucky falling away until he’s nothing more than a broken toy, an ant, a speck and finally... gone. The pain and rage and hopelessness filling Steve again, just as strongly as it had all those years ago.

_“I figured I’d wait.”_  
“For what?”  
“The right partner.” 

So many regrets. So many missed opportunities. Peggy in that red dress. It seems selfish, when he thinks how many of those people never made it through; claimed by one of so many wars fought while he lay asleep, or just by the gallop of years that separated Steve from the life he was born into.

_“Hell, I’m glad I never invited you for fondue.”_

Millionaire inventor, ace stickman and, above all else, a staunch friend: Howard Stark. Always so cool under pressure, at ease and ready to offer up a sly quip. He still fell, though. A car accident. But not before he created an empire and a son to rule over it.

Tony Stark. Everything his father was and more, yet somehow also less. 

Shallow.  
_Left_

Narcissistic.  
_Right_

Vain.  
_Left_

Arrogant.  
_Left_

Irreverent.  
_Right_

Tony is both angel and demon, and the fact that he’s now older than Howard had been when they’d known each other... exhausts Steve. But there’s no doubting that, for all his faults, he’s brilliant. Without him, they’d never have made it out of New York, or today’s fiasco, or another half-dozen near-misses that they’ve been through over the months they’ve worked together. The image of Barton laid out on the ground, enemies slithering all over him, forces its way into Steve’s mind. He imagines Romanoff fighting and losing, dropping to one knee and then another, blood blooming from her forehead, her cheek, dribbling out of her mouth as she falls, her eyes pleading him to help her. To do something. To save them. To save all of them.

The crash and gush of another punch bag biting the dust jars Steve out of his reverie. He looks down, seeing the forlorn carcasses of far too many cowskins laid out, haemorrhaging zirchromium sand onto the rubberised floor.

“Yay,” comes a faint and somewhat condescending cheer from a bench tucked into a dark corner of the gym.

Steve blinks, swatting the sweat away and sniffing. “Stark?” he asks.

Tony, out of the suit and in his customary jeans and tee attire, leans forward into the light. He scoops up some of the spilled sand and lets it run through his fingers.

“This stuff is five bucks a pound, you know?” he asks.

Steve can’t help it, he laughs. “I’ll sweep it up and recycle it,” he says.

Tony shrugs. “Forget it, what’s five bucks? Well, times...” He performs a quick assessment. “2160?” He scratches his nose. “Yeah, go fetch a brush, Rogers.”

Huffing shakily, fatigue hitting him like a wall, Steve starts to unwrap his hands. The tape comes away bloody and his hands screech abuse. He doesn’t know how long he stood there, nor how long Tony sat and watched.

He sees Tony’s eyes on the bindings. “I’m fine,” he says defensively, before Tony can even open his mouth. Super-powered reflexes have to count for something, after all.

Tony’s standing now, coming towards him. “Hell you are,” he grumbles. “I came down here to... talk about today and instead I get treated to a slice of Captain America _weirdness_.”

“Pot, kettle,” Steve reminds.

Stark has the decency to blush at that. How someone as shameless as Anthony Stark still possesses the capability to blush is beyond Steve and yet - admittedly rarely - he does.

“Yeah, well,” Tony replies. “At least I don’t talk to myself.”

Steve considers arguing that point on the basis that Jarvis doesn’t count as a person and therefore Tony very much _does_ talk to himself, but rather more pressing is the accusation... “I don’t talk to myself,” he says firmly.

Tony is stood directly opposite to him now, a little closer than the social niceties of the 40s might dictate, but nothing unusually intimate for Stark. He rolls his brown eyes. “I won’t lose another, I won’t let them down. I can’t. Gee whizz I’m a unicorn.”

“There were no unicorns,” Steve says flatly.

Tony grins, one cheek ticking upwards in that half-smile of his. “No, but you _were_ totally freaking out.”

Steve drops his head, cheeks burning.

Tony is a pace closer again. He’s taking off the rest of Steve’s tape and inspecting his hands. “Hey, I’m not judging,” he says lightly as he works the tacky fabric round and round. “I mean, I’ve had my moments. I tell you about the time I woke up naked in the rotunda at MIT?”

“The internet told me about that.” Steve forces himself to square his shoulders and look straight into Stark’s eyes.

There’s something strange in them. Not pity, not quite. Compassion, maybe. Understanding. An aching sense of fellowship. “I... I just... today went south, Tony. We walked into a fire-fight and we still don’t know who with. Clint...”

“Will be fine,” Tony interrupted. “He’s a tough bastard. You think the bad guys will ever kick his ass as hard as Fury would if he died?”

Steve swallowed. “I’d rather not find out.”

“Me neither. But, Steve, it could happen. To any of us. Even you. You’re not invincible.”

A warm finger presses down on the sore and swollen knuckles of Steve’s hand, making him jerk. Reflexively, he clenches his fist, dropping into a prepared stance. When he speaks, his voice sounds raw even to his own ears.

“I’m the CO,” he says. “It’s my job to look after them. You. All of you.”

Stark pushes the bundle of bloodied rags to Steve’s chest. “Not alone. If being with Pep taught me one thing, it’s that you don’t have to do this alone.”

Another memory swims through Steve’s mind. “You know, a friend once told me something similar.”

“Well, there you go. Now two of us have said it. Gotta be true.”

“So, what?” Steve says quietly. “You’re saying I need a partner?”

Tony smiles and bows his head slightly. “Hi, my name’s Tony Stark and I’m a genius inventor with a flying suit that can break mach 3. And a genius. Did I mention I’m a genius?”

“You may have.” Steve fidgets. He appreciates the offer - more than he might have expected, actually - but he’s... “I’m just not sure that you and I...”

Tony’s eyebrow quirks. Howard’s used to do that too when Steve said something he found amusing.

“I just don’t know if we’d work well together, like that,” Steve says. “I need order, rules, to know that when I give a command, it’ll get followed.”

“And I need to be free to get inventive, even if that means breaking the rules,” Tony replies. Steve isn’t sure if it is an agreement or a contradiction.

They look each other over for a moment before Steve turns to the showers. He hears Tony sigh behind his back. Just before he exits the room, Stark calls to him.

“Hey, funny isn’t it? When I’m out of the suit, I fix things. When you’re out of yours, you destroy them. What d’you think that says?”

Steve bows his head and shakes it ever so slightly. “I honestly don’t know,” he answers quietly.


	2. Chapter 2

Three weeks ago, Tony was celebrating ‘Capsicle Day’ in Manhattan, otherwise known as the second anniversary of Steve’s defrosting. Two weeks ago he was eating a tunafish sandwich on a mouldy old couch that smelled of motor oil. Next week he’s down for major surgery.

It’s all just yet another leaf in the book of ‘shit that happens to Tony Stark’.

He’d dealt with that little... situation, of course. Or at least the bit that involved blowing things up and getting the bad guy. The nightmares, the periodic palpitations... those he’s still working on. Maybe getting his heart back will help.

Today though, he’s at the tower. The call had come in the middle of the night, West Coast time, and dragged him away from listening to Pepper sleep.

Banner’s back.

Tony likes Banner. He’s ninety-three, maybe ninety-four, percent as smart as Tony is himself. He’s also the only one on the team who wears his monster on the sleeve. That kind of honesty is... soothing. Ironic, because soothing is the last thing that Bruce would consider himself.

Bruce is still being debriefed, though. Tony wonders how that’s going for the poor SHIELD operative, shut in a little room asking questions of a guy who doesn’t like to answer them and who can express that dislike by turning into a giant green shitstorm of pain.

So, instead, Tony is bundled in the far corner of the gym, watching Cap and Nat take a few lumps out of each other on the training floor. It’s kind of mesmerising, actually. They are absolute opposites of each other in their fighting styles. Natasha flows from one graceful move to the next, hitting hard and fast and floating away like a feather on the breeze. Cap is muscle, the thrust and parry, coiled power held so tightly in check that it makes Tony’s breath catch when it unleashes. It’s brutal, but no less... beautiful. Damn. That’s a weird word to apply to a guy like the Cap.

Romanoff spins, kicking out a foot. Steve blocks with his arm. Nat catches his forearm with her boot and uses it as leverage to swing herself up and round his shoulders, her thighs clamped either side of his head. The momentum pulls them both down on the mat and Natasha rolls away to avoid 240lb of super soldier back landing on top of her. Steve grunts, makes to flip himself back up, but she’s too quick and she’s back over him, straddled across his chest. She leans in close, eyes at half mast.

Tony sits forward.

“I win,” she purrs, a smug smile fluttering across her full lips.

Steve relaxes beneath her, muscles going loose and pliant. Their faces are very close and Tony wonders if he doesn’t need to pay a bit more attention to what the kids are doing under his roof when he’s out of town.

“You win,” Steve whispers back, moving a fraction closer.

Romanoff’s back stiffens just slightly and in that split second distraction, Steve switches their positions, almost too fast for Tony to see.

Romanoff huffs and lets her head fall back against the mat. Steve smirks, and bounces to his feet. He offers her his hand. She accepts it and once they are both standing, chests moving heavily, she punches him on the arm before heading towards the showers.

Steve watches her back for a second or two before turning and looking straight at Tony. And here was he thinking he was being all subtle and clandestine. Should’ve known better; it’s hard to hide from a guy with serum-enhanced 20:20 vision. He puts on a strut and swaggers out to meet the man with a plan and, apparently, a thing for redheads.

Tony clasps the hand that Steve offers. He prefers to be the one to initiate contact with people, but when Captain America shakes your hand, you just kind of go with it. Tony isn’t above admitting, to himself, that he still gets a little bit of fanboy glee out of working with a legend. So he’d been underwhelmed right at the start, but it didn’t take long to buy into at least some of the hype. It was damn hard not to, watching the Captain in action. He’s so... good. And when you got beneath that star-spangled catsuit of his, down to Steve Rogers, he’s a pretty decent guy too.

“Stark,” Cap greets. “You got here fast.”

“Yeah, made some mods to the quinjet. It’s up to mach 2.24.”

“That’s... fast.”

Tony quirks his eyebrow. “Talking about things that move quickly, you and Romanoff?”

Steve goes redder than anyone with a normal metabolism could muster. “It’s not what it looked like.”

“Looked like you two were about to go at it. Well, more than you already were.”

“It was a ruse.”

Tony chokes on a laugh. “A _ruse_?”

The Captain rubs the back of his neck. “Natasha uses her... self as a weapon. She’s used to guys underestimating her, or falling for her charms. I wanted her to see that relying on a guy to react the way you expect can be dangerous.”

Tony takes a second to process that before breaking into a massive grin. “So you played her at her own game?” he asks.

Steve’s nose flares. “Yeah.”

Tony claps the big feller on the back. “Hell, I think there’s hope for you yet, America,” he says.

Steve blushes again, perhaps even more fiercely than before. “Glad you approve, Mr. Stark.”

“Yeah, and you gotta show me that switcheroo sometime as well,” Tony says casually. “I can think of at least three scenarios when it could come in handy.”

“We could go now,” Steve offers.

Tony laughs. “You kids,” he says, even though he knows Steve technically out-ages him by the better part of five decades. “I’m exhausted just watching the two of you roll about.”

“You should put in more close combat practice time,” Steve says, and now he sounds more like the Captain and commander than he does comrade and friend.

“You know, I think I’m okay,” Tony replies. “Remember that time I saved all your asses?”

“Which time?”

“Exactly. It’s _all_ the time. You guys get into all that...” Tony mimes some kung-fu-esque manoeuvres, “...trouble and I swoop in and fix it. It’s how we roll.”

A worried frown ghosts across Steve’s brow, drawing a line of concern down its centre. He drops his voice from their joking confrontational tones. “I still think you should train, Tony,” he says. “I read the report from what went down with AIM. It sounds like some of it was a pretty close call.”

Tony bristles. “I dealt with it.”

“You didn’t have to do it alone,” Steve offers, a faint smile tugging his mouth at one side.

‘Touché’, Tony thinks. But a lifetime of facing the press makes him slip into bravura mode. “I wasn’t on my own, I had War Machine as back-up. Very much as back-up. You know Rhodey, great with his mouth, less so with his hands.” As expected, the innuendo sails straight over the Captain’s head.

“Just... don’t forget that we’re your friends too,” Steve says.

It’s a quiet gut-punch and Tony feels heat in his cheeks. It’s true. They’re all friends now. Him and Steve and Natasha and Bruce. Hell, even Barton, pain in the ass that he is. Tony’s not entirely sure when it happened. Maybe while saving the world. Maybe over shawarma. Perhaps it was about the same time as he started referring to the condo as ‘Malibu Home’ and the tower as ‘Manhattan Home’. He nods and tries to smile.

Bruce Banner takes that moment to walk bashfully - how does anyone walk bashfully? - into the room. Quite literally leaping on the distraction, Tony bounds over to the other-other guy. And because things weren’t quite awkward and inappropriate enough, he begins to tickle Banner. “Who’s my boy?” he coos. “Who’s my stinky green boy?”

“Get off,” Banner says, but he’s laughing.

Tony ignores him. “I knew you’d come back to us.”

“I’m rapidly rethinking that decision.”

Releasing him, Tony stands back. “Aw, don’t say that, poppa bear.”

Steve joins them. He shakes Bruce’s hand. “Good to have you back with us, Dr. Banner,” he says.

“I wish I could say it’s just a social call,” Bruce replies. Tony’s ears prick up at that.

A slight cough from behind them makes all three men turn around. Natasha Romanoff, hair in tight wet rattails of spun copper, a slick black catsuit stretched over her lean, toned body, is a sight that Tony can appreciate. Hell, you’d have to be dead, buried and decomposing not to. Or your name could be Steve Rogers because god damn, Tony thinks the super soldier might actually be action-man in disguise. But if the Captain is unmoved, the rapid beeping of Banner’s wrist watch beside him suggests that not all of Tony’s companions have painted on underpants. Hurriedly, the rumpled scientist silences the alarm and Tony works very hard at not smirking.

“Boys, if I have to separate you... I won’t,” Natasha says. “I’ll just call Hill in here and we’ll watch.”

Tony waggles a finger at her. “You, Romanoff, have a filthy mind.”

“Uh huh,” she says, her eyes no longer on him.

Tony plucks at Cap’s sleeve. Steve looks down at it for a second, brow folded, and then inclines his head. Natasha and Bruce don’t seem to notice them leave.

****

“So why’s Banner back?” Tony asks as soon as they’re in the hall.

“He has intel,” Steve replies. “You want a smoothie? I just learned what smoothies are.”

“You can’t dodge my questions by offering me delicious beverages,” Tony replies.

Steve shrugs and scratches the flat line of his stomach under his t-shirt. If Tony didn’t know that the serum had made Steve the perfect soldier in 1943, he would swear the guy is even more ripped than when they first took on Loki together. And not just more muscular. More... everything. 2010 Rogers wouldn’t have pulled that feint on Romanoff, he’d’ve been too stiff to try it. Maybe it just takes a while to defrost after 70 years in deep-freeze.

“He’s figured out why we couldn’t see what was going on at the base in upstate.”

“And here was me thinking I’m your favourite tech genius,” Tony says with a theatrical pout. “Why didn’t you ask me to look into it?”

“You were distracted,” Steve replies.

“I was stopping Aldrich Killian from taking over the planet.”

“And that’s distracting.”

Tony falters briefly. “Yeah, that’s distracting,” he belatedly agrees.

The Captain puts a hand to his shoulder. “You doing okay?” he asks.

The look in his eyes is one of affection and genuine concern. It’d be sickening if it wasn’t so... nice. The sincerity on Steve’s face is making it really hard to brush him off, treat him like some nosey reporter mining for dirt. 

Tony sucks in a deep breath and exhales through his teeth in three short huffs. “No. But I’m fixing it,” he says.

Steve nods. The place where his hand is still on Tony’s shoulder is getting warm. Tony shuffles vaguely in the direction of the kitchen and Steve seems to take the hint as they begin walking again.

“So what, did he break the randomiser algorithm they’ve been using?” Tony suggests. “Because there’s totally a randomiser algorithm.”

“I... actually have no idea,” Steve replies. “All I know is that whatever he’s found is enough to bring him in.” 

“That makes me... uncomfortable.”

“Not as much as it does him,” Cap says with a sigh.

 

****

An hour or so later, Fury arrives in a chopper and they’re all ushered into the boardroom. It’s the closest to a reunion they’ve been since the Battle of New York and it’s strange. Strange because it isn’t. They might as well all been hanging out together for the last year. Well, they kind of have. Cap’s a regular feature and Romanoff actually lives at the Avengers Tower, which Tony had graciously let them rename as such, training the new STRIKE teams. Clint is here more often than not, usually staying for a few weeks before disappearing off to God knows where on what can only be presumed as thoroughly un-avenger-type missions. The kind where the phrase ‘deny all knowledge’ features heavily in the briefings. Tony himself... well, you don’t build ten floors of R&D and not come round to play. And if Bruce has been taking calls from Fury, maybe he’s not been as out of touch as Tony had thought, either.

“I want to thank you all for being here,” Fury says. Somehow it manages to sound sarcastic. “Especially Doctor Banner, who we have to thank for deciphering the randomiser algorithm...”

“Called it,” Tony interrupts.

“...that has been keeping something big off our RADAR,” Fury concludes. He presses on a small device and a Stark International holoprojector whirrs into life, displaying a 3D map of the world. Red icons apparently denote bases of some kind. There are a lot of them. A _lot_. 18... 19... are on the US mainland.

Even Cap looks worried.

“Could it be AIM?” Stark says.

Fury shakes his head. “Doesn’t look that way,” he says. “I’ve got eyes and ears in a lot of places and there’s no chatter about this. Not even a god damn whisper. Whoever they are, they’re big.” Fury clicks the remote again and the view zooms in to a cluster of dots somewhere in central Europe, energy usage statistics pop up on the display, the readouts impressively high. “They’re advanced.” He clicks again and a grainy satcom picture pops up showing what appears to be a large railgun mounted on top of a tower. “And they are prejudiced.”

“How did SHIELD not know about this?” Steve asks.

Fury shrugs. “Don’t know what you don’t know, Cap,” he says. “Even we don’t have mind readers yet. What you and your team found at Camp Colvin told us we needed to look deeper.”

“And how did we even find out about Colvin?”

Banner clears his throat. “It looks like they had an intermittent modulation failure in their - for lack of a better word - cloak. That’s why we only ever got glimpses.” 

“We need more information,” Cap replies. “A plan.”

“We kinda have one,” Tony says. “It’s mean, it’s green and it’s a kill... uh... hurting machine.”

Banner scowls at him. “I’m not sure...”

“We’ll call it a code green, buddy. You’ll like that, your own code phrase?”

“Tony, don’t be a dick,” Romanoff has her eyes narrowed at him.

“Avengers,” Fury says.

“I’m not being a dick,” Tony says, “I’m just saying that if you’re going after an enemy as deeply entrenched as this, you want a few bunker busters behind you.”

Steve huffs. “Don’t try and pretend this has anything to do with strategy.”

“So what’s _your_ plan, _Captain_ Rogers?” Tony sneers.

“ _Avengers_ ”, Fury says again.

“Do we even want to just waltz into these bases?” Clint says. “I mean, last time, it didn’t go so well for me and my ass.”

“Last time we had no idea what we were getting in to,” Natasha says.

“Not my fault,” insists Tony.

“It never is,” Cap replies.

“Avengers!” Fury bellows. “Shut the _hell_ up!”

The room immediately falls silent.

“Still wasn’t my fault,” Tony mutters.

“Irrespective of whose fault it was or wasn’t,” Fury says, his voice returning to its usual moderation, “We would never have gathered the data we needed to crack the algorithm if you hadn’t gone into Camp Colvin.”

Steve’s mouth is set in a hard line. “So what are your orders, Sir,” he says, voice held in a controlled monotone. 

Fury faces him. “For now, nothing. I have people going over the targets, prioritising them.”

Tony bangs his hands down on the table. “What’s to prioritise? We go after the biggest energy signature.”

Romanoff raises her eyebrow at him. “Bigger doesn’t always mean better, Stark,” she says. Her eyes flick towards Bruce. “Well not _always_ ,” she repeats.

Banner goes a delicate shade of red, which is - at least - better than green. “I’m not sure it’s a good idea for me to stay while...”

“There’s what we talked about,” Romanoff says quietly.

“If it works.”

“Never know until you’ve tried.” 

Fury’s good eye narrows. “Get your rest while you can people,” he says. “Trouble’s coming, I can feel it.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter specific notes/warnings: hospitals, mention of parental death (non-explicit)

It feels nice, like a big warm blanket around him; a lazy morning with the sun filtering through your drapes and the smell of cherry blossom on the breeze. Steve opens his eyes. Tries to. He can’t. Suddenly, the warm feeling doesn’t feel so good. It’s oppressive. Water in his mouth, burning his lungs. He still can’t open his eyes.

A hand on his hand makes him still.

“Hey there, old man.”

The voice is distant, like Steve is still under water, only he can breathe again. And each breath is accompanied by a beep.

“You know, you gave us all a hell of a scare.” The voice sounds like Tony’s, but Steve’s mind is a crush of memories. Falling and watching Bucky’s face fade from view. Getting pulled from the Potomac by a cold, metal hand. Sam’s face leaning close, shouting for a medic. Strangers, obviously doctors. Someone saying he should be dead.

He’d been shot. 

“Thought we were gonna lose you for a while,” the voice continues. It’s soft, gentle. Full of life and warmth. Steve can still feel fingers linked with his own and they are tugging him towards consciousness. 

“You know how much anaesthetic it took to put you under, so they could take that lead out of your gut? You’ve got a higher drug threshold than I have.”

Steve wants to mock Tony - assuming that this isn’t all just a hallucination - for his misadventures, turn ‘we-never-partied-in-my-day’ eyes on him and hide the smile that says ‘like hell’. He wants to hold on to Tony and not let go, because he’s lost everything; everything he thought he knew about the twenty-first century and he needs something to cling to now, more than ever in his life.

“They won’t tell me what happened. I saw some of it on the news, obviously, but not how you got like this. What bastard did it to you.”

Bucky. Bucky shot him.

“Damn it, Steve. I could have protected you. I could have...” Tony’s voice wavers and he trails off. Steve hears a strangled sob morph into a grim laugh. “You know how much I hate hospitals?” the voice asks. “The smell of them? Knowing that every surface has had god only knows what all over it?”

Tony’s voice moves closer now, so much so that Steve thinks he can feel the faint stir of breath against his cheek. “They made me turn off my dad’s machine in a room just like this one. After the accident. Well, not literally turn it off. They just passed me a clipboard, I signed my name, and he was gone. Never even got to say goodbye.”

Even though it doesn’t change, the beep that matches Steve’s heartbeat suddenly sounds shriller, more fragile and tenuous to his ears. Howard’s ‘accident’. Zola has already died twice, but Steve wonders if God would be good enough to resurrect the scientist just once more so Steve can pull the trigger himself.

“Swore I wouldn’t go through that again,” Tony says. “So don’t you make a liar of me, Cap. I’ve got half the gossip columns in the US trying to do that on a daily basis.”

One last squeeze of his hand precedes a fond brush of his hair; and it aches, which Steve takes as a good sign.

A little, or it could be a long, time later, he stirs again. Things feel sharper now. His face hurts. His guts hurt. His leg... yeah, pretty much everything _hurts_. There’s no beep in the room now, just the soft stirring of breath beside him. His eyes blink open at his command this time, fluttering against the light. He turns his head and it’s Sam beside him. He had... a dream maybe... that Tony had been there. That he’d held his hand and told him not to die. But if he was ever there, he’s gone. The man sat in the chair now represents something different, but no less important. Steve wets his lips, his throat is dry and sore.

“On your left,” he says.

****

“Three weeks,” Tony says, peering over the top of his sunglasses. “Is three weeks long enough to be up and about after a gunshot wound to the midriff?”

“Says the man whose first words upon waking from major heart surgery were: ‘I know how to get the Quinjet to break mach 3’,” Steve counters.

Stark pouts. “Hey, you know that bullet of yours split up when it hit that super spine of yours, right? They had to pull it out in eight different bits?”

Tony arrived at the tower ten minutes ago and has been mother-henning for the last five of those, turning an orderly shared breakfast into a typically Stark brand of disarray. “I’m fine, Tony,” Steve says patiently.

“I want to check on it, make sure you’re not just being all manly for the ladies.” Tony lunges across the kitchen counter and pulls up Steve’s t-shirt from the hem. Natasha turns a seemingly-disinterested eye on them and Clint snorts into his coffee. 

An ugly red welt of fresh tissue starbursts against the pale expanse of Steve’s stomach. He grunts, embarrassed, and bats Tony’s hands away. He smoothes his tee back down.

“The doc’s given me the all clear. I don’t know what you expect to see that they missed,” he huffs.

“Hey, I have _intimate_ experience of shrapnel, remember? See, I have a scar too.” Tony pulls up his top in a seemingly casual manner, only made surprising by the fact that this is the first time any of them have seen his chest bared since the reactor was removed.

A fine weave of white threads stretch out from a central lump of fused flesh either side of brown skin and neat nipples. It’s... oddly captivating; beautiful in its ugliness. Even Romanoff’s eyes have widened slightly and Clint has stopped stirring his Joe with a knife.

From the far side of the kitchen, Banner puts down his paper. “If Dr. Cho perfects this...” he clicks his fingers at them, “regeneration cradle of hers, no-one will have a scar ever again.”

“Mine will be gone in another week or so,” Steve offers, cheeks flushing.

“And here was me thinking we had shared life experience now,” Tony replies, lowering his top. He turns his head so only Steve can see and winks. Steve gets the feeling he needs to have a serious chat with Ms. Romanoff.

It’s ridiculous. Things have gone to hell and yet here they are, laughing like old war buddies. Maybe that’s because that’s what they are, or maybe it’s because it’s what they need. Something to make them forget that SHIELD is good as gone, HYDRA is everywhere and that betrayal hurts worst when it wears a familiar face.

“You any closer with the photometrolysis trials?” Tony asks Bruce, turning his back on Steve.

Bruce shakes his head. “Nothing concrete yet. Getting there.”

“Want me to take a look?”

Natasha mimes the words ‘science bros’ at Clint and he laughs, eyes crinkling.

Tony doesn’t miss a beat. “If you can’t fix it, hit it real hard, right, Romanoff?”

She shrugs, unfurling herself from her barstool. “Works for me.”

Steve lets them bicker. It’s part of their process. They’re like, well, they’re like a family. A really messed up family, but then Steve wonders if there’s really any other kind. His own home life had been less than ideal, with a dad who crawled so far into a bottle when Steve was seven that he never came back out and a mom who gave everything - literally everything - to her patients. So maybe this is just how it is for everyone, although most people don’t have an archer for a nephew, a hulk for a cousin and a guy that flies about in an iron suit as a...

Steve’s head snaps up as a damp tea towel connects with his chest. “Hey, gramps, you still with us?” Tony asks, a grin on his face.

_To the end of the line_ , he thinks automatically, but even as he does his stomach drops like a stone.

“I’ve, uh, got some stuff to take care of,” he says, and flees.

****

Except there’s nowhere to escape to. He’s given up the apartment in DC, too risky. And getting sniper holes in the walls tends to invalidate your contract, not to mention losing you your security deposit. But the garage in the sub-basement of the tower is good, or at least; quiet. The garage is somewhere Steve can be alone with his thoughts and the vintage 1942 Harley Liberator that Tony presented him with last Capsicle Day. The one that his is currently sat cross-legged in the middle of, pieces all around him. He picks up a cylinder, slick with black grease.

“Huh,” he says.

It’s then he realises his jacket is vibrating. He rubs his hand on his trousers and fishes out his phone. Sam’s picture is flashing in the top corner. Steve hits ‘answer’. “Steve Rogers,” he says.

“I know it’s you, man,” comes the reply. “I rang you.”

“Hey Sam,” Steve replies. “Everything okay?”

“I got a ghost story for you.”

“And you know how I like those,” Steve answers, completing the codephrase they devised to indicate it’s safe to talk openly.

“I got a tip that a guy with a metal arm has been spotted in Brooklyn.”

“Where?”

“Pawn shop, corner of Pennsylvania and Pitkin.”

Steve sucks in a breath. “Buck had an apartment just off Pitkin.”

“Could be nothing,” Sam points out.

“Could be everything,” Steve counters. His forces his breathing to slow. “Thanks, Sam.” He hangs up then startles as someone clears their throat behind him.

“I could fix that, you know.” Steve doesn’t need to turn round to know whose voice it is.

“What?” he says, twisting in the direction of the sound anyway.

Tony stares down at him, camped out as he is on the floor. “Your bike,” Tony says. “You’ve pulled it apart pretty good, you want me to put it back together?”

“Is that our thing now?” Steve replies.

Tony shrugs. “Can be.” He pulls a screwdriver out of the back of his black jean’s pocket and flips it expertly.

Steve leans back against a metal crate as Tony picks up two bits of engine and fiddles them into a bigger piece. “So what could be everything?” Tony asks as he works.

“Uh...” Crap. “The hearing. Lots of eyes on us right now,” Steve says.

“No there isn’t,” Tony contradicts. He levels the screwdriver at Steve. “There’s lots of eyes on _you_.”

“You know, sometimes honesty _isn’t_ the best policy.”

“Way to embody the American Dream.”

Steve groans. “Aw, hell, Tony. I really messed up didn’t I?”

Tony’s deft hands falter on the metal he his manipulating. He looks up and blinks at Steve.

“No, you didn’t,” he says, “SHIELD did. We all fell for the ‘save the world’ bit.”

“You know those big ships that fell out of the sky, all of the people on them? That was on my order.”

“You know those three million people who _didn’t_ get murdered by HYDRA, that’s on you too,” Stark observes.

“Did you come to see me at the hospital?” Steve blurts out.

Tony’s eyes flick over him, weighing him up. “Yeah,” he says at last. “You were in pretty bad shape. I thought, you know, a familiar voice...”

“Thank you,” Steve says.

Tony puts a hand to his shoulder. There’s a moment of pain in his expression and then he runs the same hand over Steve’s hair, just as Steve thought he had at the hospital. He turns slightly into it and he can smell the skin of Tony’s palm, the scent of chamomile and mineral oil.

“Steve...” Tony pulls his hand back. “I can’t work _for_ you, but I can work _with_ you. Stark Industries can finance The Avengers and we finish what Fury started. Those bases we found, they have to be HYDRA.”

Steve’s pulse is loud in his ears. “I don’t know if I have that kind of fight left in me, Stark,” he says.

Tony smiles and holds out a hand to Steve, who takes it and allows Tony to pull him, rather superfluously, to his feet. 

“Of course you do,” Tony says assuredly. “Because you know that HYDRA now has everything SHIELD had, including Loki’s sceptre, and that is monumentally bad for all of us.”

In the distance, there is a not-so-delicate sound of thunder. Steve turns to Tony and Tony turns to Steve.

“Weather Channel said sunny through to Saturday,” Steve observes.

“I’ll go turn out the guestroom,” Tony replies. “Looks like we’re getting the whole band back together.”

 

****

 

“And block. Block. Block.” Steve takes the kata slowly, keeping his moves deliberate and measured. He flicks his eyes left to watch Tony’s progress. Barefoot, dressed in yoga pants and a faded black t-shirt that stretches over his chest and hangs damply with sweat, Tony is totally focussed on the motions.

“Speed it up,” Steve says. They increase pace but stay in sync, bodies moving together across the mat. “Punch one, punch two, kick.”

They finish the sequence and Steve drops his hand to his sides, muscles loose. Tony turns on him, bouncing from foot to foot. “C’mon Cap, I’m ready. Fight me.”

“Patience you must have my young padawan,” Steve replies.

Tony blinks at him before bursting into a raucous laugh. “Did you just _Star Wars_ me, Rogers?” he says.

Steve shrugs. “Banner thought I needed educating in late twentieth century popular culture.”

Laughing again, Tony throws some playful punches at Steve, which Steve ducks easily. Then, with a speed missing from his earlier taps, Tony pulls a blinding left hook, his body flowing through it to give it power. It’s enough to send the air out of Steve, not enough to hurt him obviously, but it’s definitely a piece of business rather than play.

“Oh, like that?” Steve asks.

“Bring it, old man,” Tony mocks. 

Steve cracks his neck and falls into a fighting stance. He tests Tony’s reach with a quick one-two. Tony ducks them without dropping his defence, and Steve feels a surge of pride at that. They dance about, landing a few hits each. Each one seems to spur Tony on, but he stays in control. This is not the same rough-houser Steve began training three months back. Tony is well on his way to being a fighter. Not a match for Captain America, but someone who can hold his own. Suddenly, Tony is inside Steve’s defences, an elbow to his guts, shoulder braced to his chest. On instinct, Steve pulls him into a headlock. He feels Tony chuckle, which is a little irritating, and tightens his grip just a fraction. Stark’s spine stiffens and Steve realises a split second before he does it, that Tony intends to flip him. Unprepared, he lands on the mat hard, his own weight dazing him ever so slightly. 

Tony holds up his hand like a prizefighter hearing the victory bell. Steve shakes his daze off and sweeps his leg to undercut Tony’s feet. The smaller man goes down gracelessly, landing directly on top of Steve. To make his point even more firmly, Steve hooks a leg beneath Tony’s thigh and turns them so that he is pinning Tony with all two hundred forty something pounds of his mass. Tony pushes up against him, struggling, but it’s futile.

“Give it up,” Steve says flatly. “You got cocky, Stark. Cockiness doesn’t win wars.”

Tony’s eyes narrow. He runs his tongue over his lips as though he’s about to says something, mouth a dark slit. His eyes hold Steve’s and close up, Steve can see the patterns in his irises, stripes of chocolate brown and caramel mix with amber. Steve is drawn to the fine lines around them too, lines that crinkle with smiles and laughter, or now as Tony’s eyes flutter shut and squeeze together, chin lifting, tilting his mouth up and...

The next thing Steve knows, he’s on his back, Tony once more over him but sat up and bouncing rather uncomfortably on Steve’s bladder. “And _that’s_ how you do the switcheroo,” the smaller man gloats. He smiles slyly as he puts an overly-familiar hand to the centre of Steve’s chest, right over his thumping heart.

Just as Steve mentally damns himself to hell, hell - in the form of Clint Barton - walks through the door.

“Cap, your phone’s been going... hey! Woah. My eyes. Are you two..? I think I’m blind. And I need my eyes, they’re kind of important to my job.”

Tony chuckles. “Honey, the kids are up,” he says. He gets to his feet and Steve leaps up after him. 

“You were saying something about my phone,” Steve says gruffly. He moves towards Clint, trying not to let his face register any emotion as Tony gives his backside a gentle swat on the way past.

“Yeah, I, uh...” Clint holds the phone out. “Seriously, were you guys just...”

“Sparring, yes,” Steve says flatly. He takes his phone and checks it. Five missed calls. All Sam. No voicemails. That means it’s something he doesn’t want recording. 

“I should take this,” he says. 

Tony waves him off as he and Clint start up a fake gun fight like two little boys. Steve watches them make war for a moment: Clint miming getting hit in the leg, pulling a grenade out from his pocket, flipping the pin and tossing it at Tony, and Tony diving away in slow motion, mouthing “Noooo!”

He shakes his head and leaves them to it. He has a ghost story to listen to.


	4. Chapter 4

Tony is beat enough that he should be sleeping. They’ve taken down three HYDRA bases this month alone. That’s a hell of a lot of superheroing. And when they’re not in the field, they’re training. Natasha and Banner have been working on something called Lullaby. It’s a type of post-hypnotic suggestion that Banner hopes will stay locked in his subconscious even when he’s the other guy and can be activated by a certain phrase. So far, they’ve had limited success, and Tony is out three floors of research labs. 

His training is, on the surface, far less dangerous as it’s with the Cap. Rogers isn’t the kind of guy to cause wanton destruction. But he is the kind of guy to get under your skin, make you try to be better than you are, to feel _more_ than you want to feel. Not so long ago, all Tony cared about was himself. Then there was Pep. Now, he has a whole bunch of misfits to worry about, an entire world to protect. 

Is it any wonder he can’t sleep?

But tonight, there’s one thing in particular making even the bosomy softness of Tony’s bed unattractive.

Steve Rogers.

Steve Rogers is being weird.

Well, weird is maybe too strong a word. Steve is too nice a guy to ever get called ‘weird’. But he’s definitely being... what? Evasive, secretive? Whispered phone calls, missing hours, all... blushy.

Suddenly it clicks. Oh. Oh man. Captain America has himself a sweetheart, doesn’t he? Has to be. It all fits. He imagines Rogers’ brand of ‘courting’ and how that would play out with some precocious Gen-Y’er. Chocolates and flowers? App Store credit. An arm round your best gal in a picture house? Netflix and chill. 

Those old-fashioned morals were precisely the reason that Tony knew he could pull the switcheroo on him; relying on those repressed forties attitudes to sexuality to give him an in. It was a lesson, _never assume_ , a reminder that the world’s different now; more fluid, more flexible. 

It was also funny as hell.

Tony knows he’s a good looking guy, and he’s not afraid of turning a slow smile or flash of eye at anyone to get his way, but his normal method of seduction is to talk so quick that they drop their lacy panties partly just to get him to shut up. Cap though, he’s not one for talking. Or lacy panties, one must assume. No, the kind of seduction that catches his eye would have to be the stockings and high heels kind, the coquettish duck of the head, the breathy sigh. Tony’s had plenty of it thrown at him over the years and, to be fair, mankind hasn’t come _that_ far since the forties because more often than not, it’d work for him too.

Only... there’s work and _work_. He’d expected Roger’s reaction to be one of disgust, hard-wired into him by growing up at a time when that kind of thing still got you thrown in jail. He was supposed to freeze up, go stiff and embarrassed, give victory over to Tony without really understanding what was going on. But he’d not. He’d frozen, yeah, but in a way that sucked in time with him. The way he’d looked at Tony, stared deep into him. His body had been softer than it usually felt when they sparred, heavy and damp as a lover’s breath. Tony’s eyes had closed more on instinct that by plan, and he’d almost forgotten the right pivot points to flip the larger man onto his back. He _had_ , because coming out on top is an intrinsic part of the Stark-family mentality, but the victory felt like it had a cost. And if it did, then the price tag was attached to...

Nope. Just nope. How long is it since he slept? Things always start getting a bit trippy after hour fifty-four. And he should know. For Tony, ‘trippy’ is just a synonym for ‘the nineties’. Back then, he took everything that was on offer. Well... almost. Not that there’s anything wrong with two guys doing... stuff, but he’s just not ever really gone in for it, barring the odd drunken kiss. And, you know what they say: what goes on in Madripoor... 

Thing is, it’s just never been something he’s had to devote much thought to. He likes the way women look, the way they feel and smell. He likes making them laugh, because a woman’s laugh is the sexiest noise they can make, bar none. Seriously, none. 

Tell no-one he just thought that.

Tony lies back on his bed and looks at his empty nightstand. He’s put the picture of Pepper in the drawer, now. With him pretty much living here at the tower, things have been a bit strained back at the rebuilt house in Malibu. She’s busy, she’s stressed. She just needs time. And when this is done, he’ll make it up to her. Do something to fix it. Because that’s what he does.

And... he still can’t sleep. Damn it.

****

“Burning the midnight LED, Doctor Banner?”

Bruce jumps a clear half inch, sending his chair skittering off across the metallic floor of the lab. “Jeez, Tony,” he gasps, “Someone needs to put a bell on you.”

Tony grins and holds out an offering of coffee, which Bruce takes with a slight roll of his eyes.

“What’re you working on?” Tony asks, trying to peek over Bruce’s shoulder. There are sheaves of paper (paper, Bruce?) spread all over the desk with tiny scrawl all over them. Tony catches sight of some thrust ratio formulae and a tensile strength calculation. 

“Nothing,” Bruce replies in a tone best described as ‘defensive’.

“Looks like my kinda nothing. Want me to...”

“No.” Bruce half turns and collects his papers together, turning them facedown. “Just a side project.”

Tony leans against the wall. “Uh huh,” he says.

Bruce places his gifted cup on the desk beside the stack of paper, takes off his glasses and pinches the bridge of his nose between finger and thumb. “What time is it?” he asks.

“Quarter to one?” Tony guesses.

Bruce sighs. “Already?”

“Yeah.”

“Oh.”

“Hot date?”

“I said I’d try to stop by Nat’s quarters.”

“So... hot date.”

“Nothing like that.” Bruce’s eyes flick away furtively. “We were just going to work on mnemonics.”

“If that’s what the kids are calling it these days,” Tony says with a shrug.

Bruce sighs, draws his chair back to him and sits himself back down. “Is there a reason you’re bugging me, Tony?”

Tony smiles to himself. Not a lot of people ‘get’ Banner. Most would assume that a statement like that is him trying to close down a conversation. But it isn’t. If Bruce is relaxed enough around you to show irritation, you’ve done something right. “Oh, you know, just wanting to chew the rag, shoot the breeze...”

“You couldn’t sleep?”

Tony pulls pistol fingers. 

Bruce rubs a knuckle to his eye. “So what do you want to talk about?” He grimaces as Tony raises an eyebrow. “Oh, oh no. We’ve been over this.”

“So we go over it again.”

“I’ve told you, there’s no way to synthesise the consciousness of a human being.”

“We have EEGs, memory engrams, we’ve mapped the neural pathways of thought...”

“And it all adds up to great data,” Bruce agrees, “But that’s all it is. Integrating it, replicating the very essence of humanity, that would take...”

“Artificial intelligence,” Tony concludes.

“And that’s way, way beyond me. And you.” Bruce holds up a hand as Tony begins to protest. “And I think we should all be grateful for that.”

Tony snorts. “ _‘Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind’,_ ” he scorns. “I read the book. It’s science fiction, Bruce. Science _fact_ is that technology doesn’t have the weaknesses humans do. It’s perfect, pristine. We’re the monsters who twist it.”

“So what? You want to save us from ourselves?”

“Ourselves... whatever’s out there...” Tony casts his eyes briefly upwards, towards the star-laden heavens he saw ripped apart. A shudder passes through him.

“Tony...”

Tony looks back, damning the slight blur in his vision. He blinks it away. Tired. Just tired. Banner will get that. “It’s alright,” he says, taking a deep breath. “Like you say, it’s all just pie in the sky.” He frowns thoughtfully.

“You want pie now, don’t you?” Bruce says, his cheek ticked into a half-smile.

Tony rubs the back of his neck and grins back ruefully. “Pie would be awesome.”

Bruce stands up and stretches. He runs his hands over his crumpled, white shirt in a futile attempt to smooth it. “ _Sleep_ would be awesome,” he corrects.

Tony pulls out his phone (or super-hub, whatever) and presses a few buttons, connecting in to the tower’s energy usage data and internal biometrics. He zooms in on Level 43 (Avenger’s Quarters) and studies the readouts. “Might want to drink that coffee, big guy,” Tony says. “I’m showing lights on and a moving heat sig in Romanoff’s quarters.”

Bruce dips his head. “Oh, no. It’s too late to call in...”

“Never too late for love, buddy,” Tony replies. “Or... mnemonics,” he adds hastily as the set of Bruce’s shoulder stiffens.

Bruce shakes his head, but grabs the coffee and knocks it back in one. Then he makes for the door, and Tony is pretty sure he hears him mutter the word ‘jerk’. 

In a rare moment of restraint, Tony waits until the lab door hisses softly closed before responding. 

“You’re welcome,” he says softly.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter specific notes/warnings: WWII flashback/dream sequence

_The cold bites through the uniform; snow deep on the ground. The men are tired and hungry but it’s another five miles to shelter and they need to get there before the light fails completely. Steve doesn’t like the Howlers being used this way. Forays into enemy territory are fine, fighting the Nazis on whatever front is their job, but deliberately going into civilian regions to fly the red, white and blue? It’s asking for trouble. The Russians are a proud people. They don’t need to a saviour, they just need a hand saving themselves._

_‘Hearts and minds win wars, Rogers’, Senator Brandt had once told him._

_~~~~_

_They arrive in town a little after nightfall but the narrow, rubble-filled streets are still busy. A gaggle of dirty children cluster around the soldiers, holding out various trinkets and cupped, grubby hands. Steve kneels down before a young girl with huge brown eyes, a patched dress and a threadbare ragdoll. He holds out a small chocolate bar. “For you” he says, wiggling the candy for effect. Her eyes fill with tears as she snatches the chocolate and runs. He notices she has dropped her doll. He picks it up, it’s dirty and held together by many irregular stitches. “Hey!” he calls. “Hey, uh, devushka,” but she’s gone. Steve tucks the doll into his pack. They’ll be here for a day or so, maybe he can return it._

_The door of a large wooden house at the end of the square opens and a fierce looking older woman marches out, arms folding across her chest._

_“You are late,” she calls to them in heavily accented English._

_Steve takes off his helmet and walks towards her. “Sorry, Ma’am,” he replies. “Had to go cross country to avoid a roadblock twelve miles south.”_

_“You are still late,” the woman replies. Steve has found there’s much to like about the Russian people, not least their humour. It’s not the silly slapstick and flashy spangles that the generals back in Washington think the troops will like, it’s fast and wicked and blink-and-you’ll miss it funny. Back before he enlisted, Steve had seen a production of Chekhov’s ‘Reluctant Tragic Hero’ in a basement club in Queens. He’d thought it the most hilarious thing ever, even if Buck spent the whole walk home saying ‘I don’t get it.’_

_“I’m late, but at least we are not,” he says. He watches her filter that, run the English through her head. Then she nods._

_“Very good,” she says. “For an American.” She shows them inside and Steve sees a neat open space lined with narrow cots and a warm fire in the hearth. The smell of stew washes over them and he hears a few pleased moans from the men behind him._

_~~~~_

_The first explosion rips Steve from sleep, his hand goes straight for his shield. Buck is next up, eyes as wild as his hair, gun levelled and ready. Howls and gritty orange light filter through the dull windows._

_“We’re under attack,” Bucky says. Steve nods._

_They spill out of the hut and into hell. Firestorms have reduced the paltry village to a pyre. He doesn’t need to issue orders, the Howlers go straight to work taking down the enemy or leading civilians to the precarious safety of the tree line. The sky cracks like it’s filled with thunder, and Steve runs straight into the flames._

_~~~~_

_Fire. Smoke. Gunpowder. Blood. The stench of war. It clings to his suit, to his skin._

_“Cap, look out!” It’s Bucky, from his left. Steve lifts his right arm and the knife-wielding Nazi runs straight into his shield with a clang._

_“Thanks, Buck,” he says as his best friend appears at his side._

_Bucky snorts. “Like you need me,” he says with a quick, soot-smudged grin. “They’re on the run,” he says, nodding to the fleeing forces._

_“Let them,” Steve replies. “We need to help put out these fires. Get Dugan and Happy to organise bucket-lines from the river.”_

_Bucky nods and turns, but as he does, the dazed soldier at Steve’s feet lifts his gun and fires._

_Time slows. Steve sees the burst of blood erupt from Bucky’s shoulder as the bullet passes straight through. The force of the blow sends Bucky lurching forward, crumpling and falling to the floor. Cap takes the soldier out with an uncontrolled kick before bounding across the rubble to Bucky. He turns Barnes over, hand going straight to the freely-bleeding wound, pressing on it. The blood is warm and pulses between his fingers. That’s good, very good. If you’ve got a pulse, you’re still alive._

_“Buck?” he says, shaking Bucky slightly._

_Bucky’s eyelids flicker, his dark lashes fluttering against pale cheeks. They open, slowly, blinking. They’re unfocussed and confused. “Stevie?” he says, sounding very much like the boy from Brooklyn he’d once been._

_Steve shushes him. “I’ve got you Buck,” he says._

_Bucky coughs painfully. “Little Stevie Rogers coming to my rescue,” he slurs. “’s nice.” His eyes close slowly._

_“C’mon Buck, none of that. No time to sleep yet,” Steve says, trying to keep the tears out of his voice._

_“Y’don’t need me,” Bucky whispers, words barely audible. Steve’s world falls away until it is just Bucky’s lips. “You don’t need me anymore...”_

Steve lurches awake, rolling onto his front and holding himself up on his elbows. He’s panting and sweating. A dream. No, more than a dream. A warped memory. The town had been real, the attack had been real, but Bucky had... had never...

A sobbed breath shakes Steve. Bucky hadn’t died there. Bucky had died falling from a speeding train. Except he hadn’t, he’d been frozen and resurrected time and time again, twisted and brutalised until killing became almost all he was. But a kernel of the man, the one that he had been, remained. Steve had seen it in his eyes, felt it in the blow that didn’t land.

“I’ll always need you, Buck,” he whispers.

****

The city really is beautiful at night, the skyscrapers lit up with firefly windows. Steve walks into the Avenger’s kitchen, a surprisingly simple and homely space provided for function rather than form. It’s panoramic windows look out over downtown and away into the distance. So many people, so much life. Sleeping, praying, fighting, dancing; the good and the bad rising and falling like waves, crashing together and falling away to a murmur. Without turning on the lights or taking his eyes from the dazzling city below, Steve presses the ‘strong’ button on the coffee machine.

The machine beeps grumpily.

Clint’s voice comes through the darkness. “Sorry Cap, that’s on me. Used the last of it.”

Startled, Steve spins around. Clint is sat on top of the refrigerator, legs drawn up. He raises a mug, which flashes in the dull illumination.

“Clint? What’re you doing up there?” Steve says. He opens the fridge and pulls out a carton of milk.

“Just looking. I see better from far off.” There’s a wistful tone in his voice, one that makes him sound older and very much less... Bartonesque than usual. Steve slouches onto a bar stool and takes a gulp straight out of the carton.

“That’s gross,” Clint says.

“Only if you put it back,” Steve corrects. He shakes the carton. Maybe two pints left in it. Which is fine, it feels like a two pint kind of night.

“Always with an answer.” Clint tuts. “You’re just like my...” He stumbles for a second. “Ma,” he concludes hastily.

Steve doesn’t miss it, but he’s too heartsore right now to poke about in someone else’s business, nor would it go well if they tried to reciprocate.

“So... what’s up?” Clint says. 

Steve sighs. So much for discretion. “Bad dreams,” he says.

“Really? Cap America doesn’t sleep the righteous sleep of the just?”

Steve can’t tell if Clint is being serious or not. For a lot of people, The Captain is a figurehead, a symbol of the American Dream; goodness, honesty and valour. He’s not supposed to have nightmares because he’s not supposed to do anything that could come back to haunt him. ‘Tall and brave, strong and true, a hero dressed in red, white and blue’; that was his radio jingle. Oh heaven on high, he’d had a jingle. It was there to deflect people from the truth, the terrible reality of the things he’s seen and done. Comrades staring at him with glassy, dead eyes; the bloom of blood beneath his fist; a dirty ragdoll laid on top of a pile of smouldering rubble. He feels the tears there again, blinking rapidly, and turns back to the window as casually as he can. He can’t let Barton see them. He’s been the Captain too long, they just won’t fall.

“Hey, Cap,” Clint says softly. “ _Steve_.”

“Yeah, Clint?”

“I’m sorry about this morning. Calling you out with Stark.”

Steve frowns. “Huh?”

“Well, I mean, I know how these things are in their early days, and the two of you...”

Despite his heavy chest, Steve’s eyebrows arch. “We were _actually_ sparring,” he says.

“Yeah? Cause it looked like, uh...”

“I _know_ what it’ll have looked like.”

Clint sniggers. “You sure about that?”

“People had sex in the forties, Barton,” Steve replies.

Clint sucks in a breath. “Woah, that escalated faster than I expected.” He hops down from his perch, coming to lean against the sink. “So, uh, is that something... I mean, don’t take this wrong, but Stark has a reputation...”

“With women. Do I look like a girl to you, Barton?” Steve says.

“I am terrified by every possible answer to that question,” Clint replies. “You, uh, know though that things aren’t always that simple these days?”

Smiling to himself, Steve sighs. “Things have _never_ been simple. They’ve just been different. And adapting... that’s something I’m good at.”

“Really?” Clint replies, slipping into the stool next to him. “So this whole old-timey thing you’ve got going on...”

“You adapt, nobody said you have to give up everything you are,” Steve says. He takes a long pull on his milk. It’s not quite the same as knocking back beers, not that it would touch him if he did, but the lingering helplessness of the dream is still with him and he feels reckless. “You ever go to the Smithsonian, see who I was?”

Clint clears his throat. “Uh, yeah. You were a dweeb.”

Steve chuckles, low and slow. Somehow, that was precisely what he needed to hear.

“I was 95 pound with my shoes on, five foot four on my toes. I went into a machine and came out...” He runs his free hand over his torso. “Like this.”

“Pretty sweet,” Clint observes. He steals the carton of milk from Steve and takes a pull, shrugging.

“Pretty different,” Steve corrects, taking back his milk. “I didn’t even have time to think about how long my legs were or how my chest didn’t hurt when I ran. Same thing when I came back from the ice. I just kept running.”

“So, two guys, that’s something you’d be okay with?”

“Moot point,” Steve says with a shrug. 

“But you’ve thought about it? Like, where all the bits go and stuff?”

“Clint Barton, are you about to give me the ‘birds and the bees’ talk?” Laughing at someone isn’t something Steve would normally do, but, c’mon. Even he’s only human.

Clint grumbles. “Well, bees and bees,” he says.

“Look,” Steve says, slipping an arm around Clint’s shoulder, “Tony and I... we’re friends. Can’t see what could change that.”

“Uh-huh,” Clint says.

Steve drains the last of his milk. “You know, Barton, I don’t think we’ve ever talked like this before,” he says.

Clint scratches the end of his nose. “Well, it’s a spy thing. Don’t get too close. And like I say, I see things better from a distance. So sometimes it’s better to keep my friends there. That way I can spot things for them they might not even see themselves.” He disentangles himself from under Steve’s arm and crosses to the westward facing window, putting a palm to the glass. Steve watches him, perplexed, but knows better than to ask. When Clint turns back, there is a half smile on his face. “But what do I know. I’m the guy with a bow and arrow who hangs about with gods and kills aliens.”

“And can eat an inhuman amount of pistachio ice cream,” Steve reminds. “Don’t forget that.”

“I _never_ forget ice cream,” Clint says with a wink. “Ice cream’s important.”

****

Steve takes the long way back to his bedroom, the one that involves a long run via Yonkers and buying the biggest chocolate cream pie available to a guy in sweatpants at 3 o’clock in the morning. And, because this is the twenty-first century, that’s a fairly large pie. He leaves the pie in the kitchen and his sweatpants on the floor of his bedroom and gets on top of the still-rumpled covers.

A few minutes later, he gets back up, picks up his sweatpants and folds them. His phone is a heavy lump in the pocket and he pulls it out.

The message light blinks brightly in the darkened room. Steve presses his thumb to the screen:

‘DOES THE NAME BARON STRUCKER MEAN ANYTHING TO YOU?’ it reads. The number is ‘unknown’ and considering the modified Starkphone they all use is capable of dialling the President - on his bathroom phone should any of them so wish - the message can only come from one person.

Time to rouse the troops.


	6. Chapter 6

It’s 5:15am and they’re all gathered in the briefing room. Avengers Assemble would be pushing it, more like ‘Avengers Stay-the-hell-awake’. Not him, obviously. 5:15 would be a lie-in in Tony-world. He’s already four coffees to the wind and ready to fly without the suit. Everyone else, though. Clint has his forehead pressed to the glass table and might actually be asleep. Thor’s hair is a tangled bird’s nest and he has bed-linen wrinkles engraved on his mighty cheek. Bruce is wearing a rumpled white shirt that looks suspiciously similar to the one Tony saw him in four hours ago. Natasha is in tartan pyjamas and no-one is mentioning it because, while they don’t look like they’d be great at concealing weapons, _you just never know_.

Even Cap looks tired, his eyes rimmed in pink and the crease in his brow contrasts sharply with the paleness of his skin. They’re only subtle hints, ones you might miss if you didn’t look close. 

But apparently today is Tony’s look closely day.

While Hill hands out dossiers - she puts his down on the table before him because she’s good like that - Tony scans through Jarvis’s metrics of the night before. Hawkeye: up ‘til late, 3 phone calls, all untraceable - Tony puts a mental pin in that - then a midnight soiree with Cap. Cap who then goes out for a... 33 mile run (kids today) and comes back with pie. (Pie, yay!) Bruce... after leaving the lab, Bruce made his way to floor 43, sector 3 and never moved. Ditto Widow: sector 3... point 2. Tony smirks.

“So Jarvis tells me you two spent the night together,” he says, aiming it at Banner and Romanoff.

Banner flushes, although his watch thankfully doesn’t alarm, and Natasha turns the eyes of a trained killer on Stark. Maybe it’s the fifth cup of coffee talking, but this might not have been a triple A play.

“We, uh, were working on some stuff ‘til late and kind of crashed. That’s all,” Banner says. Tony sees Natasha curl her hand up into her sleeve and wonders whether it’s time to call for back-up. Instead, he sticks out his lower lip in a dramatic pout.

“And here’s me thinking I was the only avenger you liked to snuggle with, Dr. Banner.”

“That was one time, by accident,” Bruce replies, flushing - if possible - a little more deeply. Natasha turns wide eyes on him and he shakes his head slightly. Oh to be a fly on the wall when Bruce tries to explain that one away later*.   
*Note, he can’t.

Steve clears his throat. Everyone sits up straighter. Even Barton turns vaguely glassy-eyes towards him. Tony makes a conscious effort to slouch lower in his chair but he opens his dossier to study it.

“Until now, we’ve been hitting HYDRA bases hard, taking out their forces,” the Cap says. “But we’ve not been focussed on any one cell. Now we are.”

Tony looks at the collage of photographs on the front page of the dossier, not least the one marked as a SHIELD personnel mugshot.

“Seriously, he used to be one of us?” Tony asks. “And no-one saw that monocle and called ‘bad guy’?”

“Strucker was a SHIELD agent,” Steve confirms, “But we have reason to believe he was a sleeper for HYDRA from the start. His team took possession of Loki’s sceptre two years ago and dropped off the map days before the events in DC.”

Tony mimes a helicarrier wiping out a sizeable chunk of Triskellion but holds up his hands in surrender when Natasha scowls at him.

Thor rumbles deep in his chest. “Then we must find this Strucker and put an end to his nefarious plans.”

“Agreed,” says Cap. Tony mouths ‘nefarious’ at him and thinks - just _thinks_ , mind you - that it earns him a small smile.

“So, plan of attack, boss,” Natasha says.

“The last intel we have on Strucker is a flight plan he registered to Ferihegy, so that’s where we start. Natasha, I want you and Barton to check in with your contacts in the Balkans, see if anyone’s been buying up weapons.” Romanoff nods curtly and glances at Barton. “Thor and Stark are air recon. I’ll co-ordinate. We identify and verify targets, then the five of us take them down together.”

Bruce coughs quietly. “The six of us.” All eyes turn to him. 

“You mean?” Tony gives a theatrical gasp.

“Code green,” Bruce says, hanging his head.

Steve leans on the table. “Doctor Banner, are you sure?” 

Bruce’s eyes flick to Natasha and she smiles slightly. “I’m sure,” he says. “It’s what we’ve been working towards.”

Thor slams his hands down on the table. “I for one look forward to vanquishing our foes beside my other green brother,” he declares. “Together, we shall send many souls into the afterlife!”

Bruce withers.

“Maybe we only code green when we _really_ need to,” Natasha says, patting Bruce’s arm supportively.

“Affirmative,” Steve says. “Now let’s suit up and move out.”

****

For Tony, getting suited up involves brushing his teeth, telling Jarvis to run a full diagnostic on the Mark 43b, and lining up a playlist for the flight. He knows the rest have their little good-luck routines, you could call it _preparation_ ; whatever. Thor is off, presumably sacrificing a goat or something. Banner will be dosing up on anti-sickness meds, because he’s not great at flying. Tony imagines that right about now, Steve’s probably casting deep and meaningful stares at his shield, being all stoic and manful. Hawk and Widow are usually a bit more fun - god help him, watching two assassins pull out various terrifying weapons probably shouldn’t class as fun - so that’s where he’s heading.

His pace slows as he gets close to the armoury. Quiet voices are floating out into the corridor; Clint and Natasha talking to one another.

“Really?” whispers Natasha, voice squeaky with excitement.

“Found out last night,” Barton replies.

“Oh my God, Clint,” Natasha says. Tony goes all stealth-mode on the adjacent corner, leaning round so he can just see them. They’re stood virtually in the doorway, Clint already suited and booted and Natasha in a vest-top and strappings. She reaches up and hugs him and after a startled second, Clint leans his bow against the wall and hugs her back. “That’s fantastic,” a surprisingly cuddly Black Widow bubbles.

“Yeah. Yeah, it is,” Clint replies with a wistful smile, and buries his nose in her hair.

Okay. So that’s just plain disconcerting. True, when they’d first all teamed up Tony had assumed there was _something_ going on between those two, but it rapidly became clear that it was some better-not-talked-about shared experience thing that is definitely non-sexual. Or maybe a bit sexual as well, who knows with spies? But over the last couple of months, Tony had gotten the distinct impression that there is something _definitely_ sexual bubbling between the fiery-haired assassin and one scientist with a not-so-secret alter ego. So why are Clint and Nat now cuddling up like old flames?

Oh God, they’ve turned his tower into a co-ed freshman dorm. Which, when Tony comes to think about it, is _exactly_ how he ended up naked in the rotunda of MIT.

Romanoff drops back from her toes and smiles shyly up at Barton. “I can’t _wait_ to see Laura,” she says. “When this is done, you and me’ll take a trip, right?”

“Sure thing, softie,” Clint answers with a smile. Natasha sashays off to get dressed.

Tony ducks his head back around the corner and smoothes his t-shirt down, plastering a casual smile on his face.

“I know you’re there, Stark,” Clint calls.

Busted. Tony squares his shoulders and sidles round the corner.

“You would make a terrible spy,” says Clint.

“I was... hiding in plain sight?”

“You were sucking at the hiding part.”

“Hey, I was relying on you being distracted copping a feel of Romanoff.”

Clint splutters. “I wasn’t... she’s not... hell, Stark, we were just hugging. Are you so emotionally stunted that you think if a guy hugs someone they’re trying to get in their pants?”

Tony shrugs. “Pretty much,” he says.

A dangerous look comes into Clint’s eyes, a calculating look that Tony has never seen him apply to anything but wind speed calculations. “Maybe you and Steve should go hug it out then,” Clint says coldly. He turns heel, snatching his bow up as he passes, and barging Tony out of the way.

****

The Quinjet could make the flight to Budapest in two and a half hours, were it not for little things like contested airspace and inter-agency maximum speed agreements. And even then, if the punishment for breaking the regs was just a fine, Tony would tell Jarvis to floor it and wire the money in advance. But when it comes to taking a SAM in the reactor exhaust... you can just go ahead and insert pretty much any innuendo you like there, so long as you stick to subsonic speed.

Which means they’re all stuck inside a fairly cramped space for the next four hours. Banner’s got Puccini playing and Widow is sharpening her knives while watching the way his face tenses and relaxes with the music. Tony had passed Barton on the way in and been blanked so, great; awkward. 

That leaves Tony with only one option to diffuse his boredom. “Hey, Cap,” he calls, squinting into the back where the Captain is lurking.

He gets no reply.

He puts down the doodad he’s been fiddling with (it’s actually an experimental new type of pseudo-organic battery, very exciting, very cutting edge) and stalks into the rear of the cabin. “Cap, you wanna talk strategy?” he asks, because let no-one suggest he doesn’t know how to dangle a carrot.

He still receives no answer, but the reason is now evident at least. Captain America is having a nap.

“Huh,” Tony says, sitting himself down on the bench opposite.

It’s possibly a strange thing about say to a totally normal process but, just for a second, he’d been back in the hospital room they’d shown him to, staring down at the battered face of the only man, other than himself, that Tony had ever considered invincible.

Scars heal. Memories stay.

Steve’s face is faultless now; skin pale and faintly dotted with freckles, eyes closed and long lashes gently brushing ever-so-slightly flushed cheeks. His head is tipped back and resting against the metal bulkhead behind him, arms crossed over his broad chest. His mouth has dropped open and his nostrils flare delicately as he - well, there’s no kind way to say this - _snores_. And somehow, that makes him look hotter.

Wait, what? Tony’s brow spasms as he reviews his thought process.

Meeting Captain America had been a strange day for Tony. Here was the man he’d spent his childhood listening to stories about, whose own father revered the memory of and had only ever spoken about in superlatives. And he’s... a bit of a jerk. Arrogant, self-righteous, pig-headed. In short, basically nothing more than Tony is himself. So why had Howard held him in such high acclaim? Of course, it hadn’t taken long to figure out. He’s self-sacrificing, disciplined and tactically brilliant. And that was just when he was fighting aliens. Over the last two years, Tony has come to see him as kind and patient and above all else, a good friend.

A good friend with a great ass. Because - c’mon - if you weren’t supposed to have a bit of a crush on Captain America then his suit wouldn’t be skin-tight. Thing is, if Tony was just throwing an appreciative leer or two at the back end of the First Avenger, he would probably be down with it. Modern man and all that, in touch with his inner blue streak. But that... that isn’t it. It isn’t that he imagines getting _with_ the Cap, it’s that he can’t imagine being _without_ Steve Rogers. And that gives him one of those twitchy headaches, right here, under his left eye.

This symbol, this paragon, is a real person. He’s not a fantasy, he’s part of Tony’s life. A big part. And he’s right here. Snoring.

So, look. If he were going to do this - and it’s a totally hypothetical, scientific curiosity ‘if’ - how would you even tackle something like that? With a guy who’s longest-term relationship is with an iceberg? You can’t exactly just sidle up to him and say “Hey there, Steve. Current thinking is that sexuality is a fluid continuum, with attempts to rigidly categorise orientation being misleading at best and psychologically detrimental at worst. So with that in mind, do you wanna make out?”

That... that’s just horrible. And even if it weren’t, even if Tony could carry off something that god-awful with charm and aplomb, this is Steve we’re talking about. Captain Steve Rogers, born July 4th, 1918. That’s way before even ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’; back then it was ‘don’t even think about it or you’ll be in front of a court marshal before you get your zipper down’. You can’t just expect him to shake off a lifetime of being told a thing’s wrong, can you? 

So, between having to sound like a sociology major (oh the humanities) and freaking out the second national symbol of the good ol’ U S of A, it would seen the only option is to just leave it. Focus on the matter in hand. Which is the mission. And that ablative plating for the Mark 45. And maybe he should list the condo with a realtor now it’s sat vacant. Ooo, and what if they were to catalyse the phytometrolysis in the E11PV battery using superfine particles of carbon-bound vibranium? He could shave a bit off the back of Cap’s shield, no problem...

Look how easy it is. Nothing to see here, move along.

He lets his eyes fall again over Steve’s face, the quiet power of it. Even like this, perhaps _especially_ like this, it radiates a sense of authority. Nobility.

“They don’t build ‘em like they used to,” he says.

Leaving the relative privacy of the rear compartment, Tony makes his way back towards the cockpit. On his way, Natasha catches his arm.

“Is Cap okay?” she says. “He’s very quiet.”

“Actually, he’s asleep.”

Her eyes go wide. “He never sleeps before a mission.”

“Maybe he was tired?” Tony suggests, scratching the side of his nose thoughtfully.

“Maybe he finally trusts us not to go rogue the second his back’s turned,” she counters.

The words have just enough edge to them to make Tony frown. “Hey, when you’re 96, you’ll be allowed to nap when you like too,” he counters.

“When I’m 96, I’ll be long-forgotten dust,” Natasha replies, her lips set straight.

Tony chuckles. “Sometimes I forget you’re Russian.” 

He makes it a few more steps before Clint stops him as well. “And scary,” he whispers. And with that, Tony knows he’s forgiven.

*** 

“Well, that could’ve gone better,” Tony says, emptying his metal footpiece of... of... “Banner, what did you say this stuff was again?”

“Some kind of biomimetic substrate, I think” Bruce answers with a weary sigh. It hadn’t been a ‘code green’ kind of mission, but the Cap had called him down to the (now-ex) hydra facility when it became obvious that something both hinky and genetic-y had been taking place beneath the town of Garenaya. 

“There aren’t enough hot showers in the world to get this gloop out of my hair,” Natasha grumbles, passing a fist full of wetwipes over the exposed portions of her torso. “And bozhe moi, does it stink!”

Cap steps away from the navigation panel, rubbing a towel on his hair. “Really, Ms. Romanoff. None of the rest of us had noticed.”

Natasha pouts up with the best of them. Clint, who is banging one side of his head to try and get the ick out of his other ear, snorts a laugh.

“Jarvis,” Tony calls. “Review voice modulation data. Is Steve more sarcastic now than he used to be?”

Jarvis, who is already flying the Quinjet and analysing the data from the last mission/sheep dip, doesn’t miss a beat. “My records indicate that there has been a 17% increase in the number of Mr. Rogers’ responses that could be categorised as ‘sarcastic’, Sir.”

“And here was me thinking you and I were friends,” Steve replies, eyes narrowed at the central console.

“18%,” Jarvis corrects. 

Steve throws his hands in the air, but the corners of his lips are tipped upwards.

Even if this isn’t, as Thor might put it, their most glorious battle, their revelry isn’t entirely misplaced. Looking for Strucker is like finding a needle in a Europe sized haystack. And it turns out Europe’s pretty bloody big. The heat signatures showing on the satellites were significant enough to warrant Avenger attention, but that type of thing can be misleading when you throw steaming vats of gunk into the equation. Still, whatever Hydra was doing there - and, honestly, Tony isn’t sure he wants to actually know - they’ve put a stop to it. So score one for the home team. He would still quite possibly kill for a shower.

Clint and Natasha get to bickering, Bruce and Thor play cards. Tony is using a small signalling mirror he found in one of the lockers to try and style his hair when he hears the faintest of footfalls behind him and then a hand on his shoulder.

“Uh, Stark?” Steve says. 

Tony turns to face him. “Everything okay, Cap?” he asks.

“I... yeah,” Steve replies. 

Tony is caught suddenly by Steve’s eyes and has to suppress a shudder. Steve’s face is young, his body is young, but sometimes his eyes are old. More than just old: eyes that have seen more than they were supposed to. 

“I just wanted to say ‘good job’ for today.” Steve continues. “I know close quarters isn’t your thing, but I saw you take that guard down. You did it neat, you did it quiet. I was very... proud.”

Tony feels heat flood to his cheeks. He’s used to telling the world that he’s amazing, fantastic, and a whole host of other things that may or may not be entirely accurate. He’s also used to flap-mouth flattery, usually in the form of reporters trying to get into his good graces. And underpants, obviously. But actual, honest praise? That’s not something he’s actually very good at accepting. It always feels like there should be a ‘but’.

“It was also my stray rocket that got us covered in this gunk,” Tony says huffily, indicating the mountain of tissues, wetwipes and torn bits of shirt they’ve dumped in a corner. “Jarvis? Do we have a read on what this stuff is yet?”

“Preliminary testing indicates its closest analogue is amniotic fluid,” Jarvis says calmly. “I will be able to prove a more thorough analysis when you return to the lab.”

“That’s... unpleasant,” Tony says with a shudder. He sees Steve’s face contort as well.

“Sounds like List’s work,” Steve says.

“You think he’s trying to _grow_ enhanceds?”

“I wouldn’t put anything post those sons of guns.”

Tony rolls his eyes. “It’s ‘bitches’,” he corrects. “Sons of bitches.”

“There’s a time and a place for words like that Mr. Stark,” Steve says. “And this isn’t it.”

“Okay, just tell me when.”

“I’ll tell you when,” Steve agrees. “Anyway, that’s all I wanted to say.”

“Well, uh, thanks,” Tony says. Because he’s a man of many words - not just sweary ones - but they all appear to have fucked off on him.

Steve smiles, and it’s a crooked, lopsided smile that teeters between warmth and shyness. The kind of smile that launches a thousand ships, although that doesn’t quite mean what it used to. 

Damn it. First order of business on getting back to the Tower: he’s ripping out the second redundancy systems and installing a shower in the Quinjet. Preferably a cold one.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter specific notes/warnings: pre-serum!Steve flashback/dream sequence and pseudo Stucky. Huzzah!

A polite buzz comes from the intercom beside Steve’s door. He puts the magazine he has been flipping through down on the bed next him and gets to his feet. He adopts an ‘at ease’ position, arms clasped behind his back.

“Yeah, come in,” he says.

It’s strange to receive guests in his quarters. With them all living together, fighting together and training together, bunks are sacred. Not that he resents the intrusion, just that it sets him slightly on edge because of its novelty.

When the door does open a second or so late, it’s to admit the unkempt hair and careworn face of Dr. Bruce Banner. The doctor smiles bashfully, leaning just over the threshold.

“Hey, uh, Cap? Can we talk?” he says.

Steve nods and Banner slips into his room, casting a nervous glance into the hall behind him as he closes the door. The two men stand facing each other for a moment. After Bruce shuffles his feet for the third time, eyes casting around Steve’s neatly appointed room, Steve gives him another encouraging nod.

“Oh, yeah, right,” Bruce says. “I, uh, hope you don’t mind, but I wanted to talk with you. In private.”

Bruce is clearly on edge, and the monitor on his wrist lets out a steady but accelerated beep. Steve knows, however, that the best way to keep Banner from getting stressed is to not be stressed yourself. He gestures to the armchair he has next to the bookshelf and seats himself back down on the edge of the bed facing it.

“You want any water?” he asks casually as Bruce settles.

“No. No I’m good,” the dishevelled scientist says. He takes a deep breath. “I have an idea for a piece of defence tech.”

The frown makes its way to Steve’s brow before he can stop it. “Bruce, you know that technology just isn’t my thing. If you’ve got something to keep people safe, you need to run it by Tony.”

“Yeah, I can’t,” Bruce says shortly. His eyes falter and fall from Steve’s. “I’m worried he’ll say no.”

The idea that whatever Bruce is bringing to the table is so extreme that Tony Stark wouldn’t accept it is concerning. Of all of the other Avengers, Steve has always felt Bruce’s principles most closely mirrored his own. It would be a darn shame to be proven wrong. “Why would he say that, Dr. Banner?” he says cautiously.

Bruce takes a deep breath, still staring into his lap. “Tony thinks that you can defeat your demons, that all you have to do is own your faults and you can overcome them.” He lifts his eyes and fixes Steve with a helpless stare. “But I know who I am. And I know who... the other guy is. I think we should prepare for the eventuality that one day I forget the difference.”

Steve’s mouth twitches with rebuttals and denials, but he can’t make any come out. As nice as Bruce is, and as in control as he seems, Steve knows that is what leaves him the most open to losing it all. Hell, he feels it in every punch he has to pull short to stop from killing someone. He knows that the changes that he himself underwent could’ve turned him into a monster. The legacy of the Red Skull is his constant reminder of that. “So what do you propose?” he says, keeping his voice level.

“We need a way to contain him, and we need a way to _control_ him. I have plans for both, but I’ll need help in putting them together.”

“But isn’t that why you and Natasha have been working on the lullaby thing?” Steve cuts in. The expression on Bruce’s face is one of such pain that Steve immediately regrets his words.

“Nat... she’s one of the reasons I want to do this,” Bruce says quietly. “I don’t want... I don’t want him to hurt her. You’ve never seen the full extent of what he - what I - can do. The guy you see, he’s still got a bit of me left in him. But if I ever lose myself completely...”

“I understand,” Steve says. “But I still think this should go to Tony.”

“So do I,” Banner agrees, the lines on his forehead smoothing slightly as his brow relaxes. “But it needs to come from you, not me.”

“Why?”

“Because he’ll listen to you,” Bruce says with a crooked smile. His words are enough to startle a little flush out of Steve, a slow suffusion of heat in his cheeks that curls down his neck and into his chest.

“I’ll try,” Steve says, “but Tony listens to Tony. No guarantees.”

****

“Six weeks from inception to launch,” Tony says. “That’s not bad.” He lowers his polarised binoculars as the rocket carrying the satellite Veronica passes out of visual range.

Bruce releases his white-knuckle grip of the rail of the private viewing balcony at the Point Kuwahu launch pad and takes a deep, shaky breath. “Thanks, Tony,” he says quietly.

“It’s Cap here you’ve got to thank,” Tony replies, nodding at Steve. “I thought it was a terrible idea, but he pulled the puppy-dog eyes on me.”

Steve lays the scowl on thickly. “I don’t have puppy-dog eyes.”

“To be fair, Steve, you kinda do,” Bruce says.

“Ha!” Tony cheers.

“You know, back in the day I would have busted you both back to Private for that kind of insubordination,” Steve replies, shooting Tony a dirty look.

“It’s a good job we’re not under your command then, isn’t it?” Tony says. A sly smirk spreads across his face. “Unless that’s your thing. Oh my God, that’s your thing! Your _thing_ thing.”

“I don’t have a thing,” Steve grumbles.

“Which, to be fair, would explain the lack of dating,” Tony narrates over him.

“Oh, really? And what would you know about my dating habits?”

“Well, nothing, which is kinda my point,” Tony says, arching an eyebrow.

“How am I supposed to go on dates with you knuckleheads to look after?”

Tony turns to face his fellow scientist. “Bruce, did he just call us ‘knuckleheads’?”

“Well gee whizz, Tony, I think he did,” Bruce replies with a sheepish grin.

Steve rubs the back of his hand against his brow and shakes his head. It’s an old game, this. Guys in the war together, you saw - and did - some terrible things. Sometimes you laughed so you didn’t break, sometimes you did it so the others didn’t realise you already had. This ‘Veronica’, it’s a big thing for all of them. For Bruce, it’s both a relief and the culmination of his fears. For Tony... well, he rarely talks money, but Steve saw the projected plans for the satellite; the R&D teams he devoted to it; the materials it required. There were a lot of zeros. No matter how deep the pockets of Stark International, it has to have cost Tony a personal fortune.

The cost on Steve’s part is a little less tangible - all he’d had to do was face Tony’s accusations that he didn’t trust them; that ‘the high and mighty Captain America’ shouldn’t want to see his friends in chains. That kind of thing. The words continued to haunt Steve even after Tony agreed to work the project for Banner’s sake. Because part of him thinks Tony might be right. Bruce has been looking over his shoulder for years, running from the threat he thinks he poses. In his heart, he doesn’t believe ‘the other guy’ is the monster, he believes _he_ is. And having a device locked onto his position at all times whose sole purpose is to contain him should this perceived inevitability arise will hardly dissuade him of that.

But it isn’t a commander’s place to ignore a potential threat, no matter the personal feelings you might have. And no good friend will turn a blind eye to your shortcomings, even if they’re big, green and damn scary ones.

JARVIS’s smooth voice cuts in to Tony and Bruce’s ‘golly gosh’ and ‘dang namit’-ing. “Sirs, the rocket has now reached optimum height and the satellite has been deployed. I’m calibrating sensors and synchronising my software to the onboard devices.”

“How does it look up there, Jarv?” Bruce asks.

“Very good, Sir,” JARVIS replies. “Most peaceful.”

Bruce sighs wistfully. “I wonder sometimes if I’d be better off in space.”

Steve sees Tony’s shudder, even though he hides it well. As casually as possible, he steps between the two scientists and hooks an arm around each of their shoulders. “Right now, I’m just glad to have friends around me.”

“Speaking of,” Tony says, tapping his ear and resuming comms with the Quinjet. A burst of rather irritated-sounding Russian comes over the loop. Natasha has been vocal in her disapproval of ‘Veronica’; she seems to take it as a personal affront. Clint was the only one brave enough to stay with her.

“Ms. Romanoff, you are live on TSR, please try not to swear,” Tony says.

“Mu'dak,” comes the response, and Steve doesn’t need a phrasebook to know Tony’s instructions have just been ignored.

Clint’s voice cuts in. “Uh, hey guys,” he says. “Something strange has come up on the readouts.”

“What is it, son?” Steve says before he can catch himself. Sometimes things just... slip out.

Thankfully Clint has the decency to ignore it. “We picked up a burst of gamma energy when Veronica’s sensors went live.”

“Solar flare?” Tony suggests.

“Unlikely,” Bruce replies. “We designed it to filter out background radiation. Can you tell me anything else about it?”

“Yeah,” Clint says over the com, “the signature looked familiar, so I ran it through the computer. It came back a 67% match for Loki’s staff.”

“Where?” Tony says sharply.

“Sokovia.”

Steve frowns. “Sokovia? Why have I heard that name before?”

It’s Natasha who answers. “It shares about a half mile of a border with Latveria.”

Steve frowns. Now _that’s_ a name he remembers well enough and for all the wrong reasons. “Alright,” he says, “We’ll be back to the jet in a few minutes. Turn the light on.”

“Turning the lights on now, Cap,” Clint replies.

****

Steve hunches over the kitchen table back at the Avengers Tower, the lights out so as not to draw attention. As much as he’d like to strap his shield on his back and head straight to Sokovia, there are questions that need answering first. Doctor Banner is down in the lab running tests, but Steve’s gut is telling him that Clint’s initial read was right. This has the feel of something _different_. Sat recon shows a fortress cut straight into an outcrop of mountain, dominating the town and glacial lake beneath. It’s precisely the kind of place Strucker would hide out: if nothing else, Hydra leaders all seem to share a flair for the dramatic. Having a civilian population so close makes a strike against the base even more difficult. There’s no room for error, no place for mistakes. If it is Strucker, he’ll be defended by the best in fanatics and weaponry. The team, The _Avengers_ , they’re good. Damn good. Perhaps the best Steve’s served with and that’s saying a hell of a thing. But that doesn’t mean they should get cocky. It’s up to Steve to formulate a strategy that not only gets them in, but also out, of Sokovia alive, and with as little collateral as humanly possible.

“Hey.”

Steve’s head jerks up. He sees Tony stood in the doorway, leaning against the frame. Silhouetted, he’s as featureless as he is when he’s in the suit.

“Oh, hey, Tony. I thought you’d be resting.”

Tony shift his weight back to both feet and taps twice on the light switch. The illumination comes up to half way, enough that Steve can now see the deep lines furrowing Tony’s brow.

“I’m good,” Tony says. “What about you?”

Steve takes a breath, prepares to say “I’m fine,” but then follows Tony’s gaze to the table top where, without even thinking, Steve has been pinching the sat recon image of the Sokovia base into a small mountain of confetti.

“You know, we have a shredder,” Tony says.

Steve shrugs. His hands flutter for a moment before he begins tearing again, more purposefully.

Tony sighs and sits down opposite him. He pulls a few pieces of the torn photograph towards him with his index fingers and arranges them into a smiley face. He tips his head to one side and lifts his eyes so they meet Steve’s square on.

And there it is. That twist in Steve’s stomach, the spasm of his throat that stops him from swallowing. A man a hell of a lot more elegant than Steve once said that the eyes are the windows to the soul, and that... that’s Tony. Because Tony, whether he’s in the suit or not, wears armour. Sometimes it’s red and gold metal, sometimes bold words and brash actions. But his eyes are the part of him that stays vulnerable. And he wears that vulnerability with grace, if only you can get close enough to see it.

“I’m worried, Tony,” Steve admits.

“You don’t think we can handle the mission?”

Steve shakes his head. “Not that,” he says. “You ever read Chekhov?”

“Um, no,” Tony says, “not really my thing.”

“I saw one of his plays performed with... a buddy, back in the day.”

Tony’s eyes haven’t strayed from his, and the amber irises hold that same intense interest that he normally reserves for a mechanical or theoretical puzzle. Steve lets out a shaky breath and hangs his head, fists loosely clenched on the table.

He startles as a warm hand covers his own, head coming up to once more connect with Tony’s line of vision.

“You’re tired,” Tony says quietly.

And he is, God knows he is. He’s seen war, and death and betrayal. He’s... what did Loki call him... a man out of time. The world has turned so many times since he went into the ice, and he feels the gravity of each spin. “Yeah,” he says simply.

A small half-smile tugs at the corner of Tony’s mouth. He looks almost pleased at the admission, a look that fades to something uncommonly bashful as he retracts his hand. “Then go hit the sack. I won’t do anything to end the world without you, scouts honour.”

Steve chuckles wearily, pushing himself to his feet. “You were never a boy scout, Stark,” he says. “No way.”

Tony’s smirk widens into a grin. “Never say never, Cap.”

As Steve reaches the door he falters. His hand presses against the wood of the frame, just where Tony’s shoulder had leant earlier. He swallows and turns back.

But Tony isn’t looking. He’s moving the tiny scraps of paper around on the table with his dextrous fingers, creating shapes and patterns and maybe a... dog?

Steve goes to find his bunk.

****

_“Bucky,” Steve hisses, tugging at the back of the larger man’s coat, “Buck, stop, you’ll get us into trouble.”_

_Bucky grunts and Steve hears the harsh crack of metal and the jingling tinkle of a chain sliding to the floor._

_“It’s a fire escape, Stevie. Shouldn’t be locked up like that. We’re providing a public service.”_

_Steve feels the blast of air as Bucky pushes the door to the roof of the apartment block open. Bucky looks back over his shoulder and flashes him a smile, and it’s a Bucky-best. It’s that half-punk, half-choirboy smile that’s so hard to stay mad at. The one that’s gotten them into as many fights as it’s got them out of. Steve sighs and follows him onto the roof._

_It’s a summer night, mid-August. It’s late and the sun has set already, just the faint pink blushes of it linger on the fine, high clouds. The sky behind is indigo, pricked by stars. The sounds of the street seem far, far away and the breeze brings with it the smell of the bay._

_Bucky has already bounded to the edge of the building, climbing up on the raised lip. He has his eyes closed and a smile, a smaller, gentler smile, on his face now. Steve kicks at a loose stone, watching his friend._

_“Can you feel it, Steve?” Bucky asks from his elevated position. “The city. I love this city. No matter where life takes us, this will always be home.”_

_“Be it ever so humble,” Steve agrees. He shoves his hands into the pocket of his summer coat. Even though the night is balmy, the fifth-story rooftop picks up breaths of cold breeze whistling down through the narrow rows between apartment blocks._

_Bucky turns. His vantage point is narrow and for a second Steve’s heart is jumping about irregularly in his throat as his imagines his friend losing his footing, falling into the alley down below. But he doesn’t. And anyway, Bucky’s the kind of guy who would fall in a garbage can and come up holding a bunch of roses. He offers a hand to Steve. “Come on, get up here with me.”_

_Steve swallows. He is not the biggest fan of heights and Bucky knows it. He also knows that Steve knows he knows it. And that’s why he’s asking. Buck likes to push Steve. In fact, he’s the only person that will. When the east river froze over in ’31, it was Bucky who convinced him to sneak out and go skating. Their first trip to Coney Island, he’d been the one to dare Steve to ride The Cyclone. He’d also been the one to buy him gum afterwards. Where everyone else called Steve delicate or fragile or even ‘sensitive’, Buck would punch his scrawny arm as though it wouldn’t break._

_Of course Steve gets onto the ledge with him._

_“Ain’t it something?” Bucky drawls._

_Steve lets his eyes drift close and tried to not hear every foot of empty air between him and the sidewalk. “It sure is... something,” he agrees. He stands there as long as he can before his legs actually threaten to give out. When he can’t hide the shaking any longer, he opens his eyes._

_Bucky’s leaning against a vent stack, well back from the edge, watching him with a smirk._

_Steve wobbles and climbs carefully down. “Jackass,” he grumbles._

_That makes Bucky’s smile widen. “Takes one to know one.”_

_He takes off his coat and spreads it out on the ground. He nods its way and sits down onto it. Steve joins him, pulling two sticks of candy and an apple out of his own pocket. He passes Bucky one of the candies. Buck tears it open with his teeth like a guy who’s not eaten for a week. Peace descends between them, just the sounds of the street echoing up from the world below. Sometimes when Steve’s with Bucky, it’s as though everything else kinda... fades. It’s not like sitting with another person, waiting to see who’ll speak first. It’s like... being on your own, but not feeling lonely. As though they’re two sides of a dime._

_Buck’s nearly finished his candy, just a few sticky slivers left of it. He sighs contentedly and stretches out on the makeshift blanket. It’s real dark now, most of the lights are out on the street as decent folks go to their beds. Steve likes to think he and Bucky are decent folks, a little bit of trespassing notwithstanding, but they’re also both 21 and the days aren’t long enough for them. Well, for Bucky anyway. Steve could happily climb under his blankets and read a book right now. But that would mean going home, breaking out of this moment in time and its easiness. He’s tired, but not enough to want to do that. Bucky shifts, wriggling himself comfortable on the hard ground. Steve casts about. The roof is covered in loose gravel and bird muck. Theirs is but a little island in the middle of that, and not much more comfortable looking for it. As though Bucky can read his mind, the bigger man flops out his arm._

_Steve smiles to himself as he lies down, the crook of Buck’s elbow providing a cushion for his head. It’s nothing, but it’s everything. It’s growing up together, pillow forts at sleepovers and dens in the park. It’s a sense that they’ll be like this forever even as the whispers of adulthood tell them that nothing truly beautiful lasts._

_The sky has cleared and it’s one of those rare, crisp nights when the moon looks close enough to touch; huge and brilliant white. He doesn’t realise that he’s moved closer to Bucky, working his way up from elbow to bicep, until he finds he can feel the radiant heat of the other man’s body warming his cool skin. Buck’s not said anything, he never does, because this is just what they do. Out of the corner of his eye, Steve can see the outline of Bucky’s face. His jaw is starting to square, the bones settling into maturity. His wide open eyes glint up at the heavens._

_“You ever wonder what’s out there?” Bucky says quietly._

_“The future,” Steve replies._

_Absently, Buck’s curled his arm up and is stroking his fingers lightly against the fine hairs at Steve’s temple. It’s soothing and Steve turns his head slightly to grant him better access. Bucky angles his head to look down at him. “Okay?” he whispers._

_Steve nods silently. It feels surreal, like he’s floating. The sound of blood in his ears is fast, but steady and strong, not his normal thready rushing. He can’t break away from Bucky’s gaze and suddenly things feel different. The air feels warmer, closer. The hard ground at his back is more forgiving. He shifts, his hip bumping against Bucky’s. They’re level now, face to face. Buck’s hand has grown still and it hardly feels as though he’s breathing. Just a bare inch separates them._

_And then, not even that._

_It’s as strange as it is familiar, as wonderful as it is terrifying. Buck’s eyes have drifted contentedly closed and his palm is against Steve’s cheek, their lips pressed sweetly together. Then a whine forces itself from Steve’s throat and something breaks, something... something..._

Steve jolts awake. The photosensitive shutters in his summer-stuffy bedroom in the Avenger’s tower have just started to allow faint light to filter through them. He draws a shaking breath, his bedclothes clinging damply to his skin.

That never happened.

Well, okay, everything up to the last bit had happened but not the... not the...

Kiss. Damn it, Rogers, just say it. He and Bucky had never kissed. And he’d never thought that mattered. It simply wasn’t part of what they were. They loved each other, sure, and that was enough. It had always been enough. But more than a lifetime now separates Steve from those times. Years that moulded him with their brutality and loss, and more regrets than he’ll ever be able to tell. And maybe that’s all the dream means. Finding Bucky again, impossibly, after all these years... his mind is fighting to find something more than grief between them.

He scrubs at his face with his hands, feeling the roughness along his jaw chafe his palms.

There’s a knock at his door. Not the mechanical buzz of someone calling him, but an actual knock. He swivels so his tartan-PJ covered legs drape heavily over the side of the bed. “Yeah,” he calls.

The door parts to reveal Tony. He’s still dressed in the suit jacket, shirt and jeans that he was when Steve left him in the kitchen.

“Mornin’ sleepy head,” he greets, slipping inside without invite. Steve guesses he can probably get away with that considering they’re effectively all living in his house.

“Time?” Steve asks, voice sounding thick even to his own ears.

“Oh-five-thirty, soldier,” Tony replies.

“I slept,” Steve says.

“You slept. You dream of helping old ladies cross the street?”

Steve yawns. He scratches his stomach and he would swear that Tony’s eyes flick furtively down just for a second. “Something like that,” he fibs. It’s a harmless lie, a nicety, because Tony doesn’t really want to know.

Tony moves a bit further into the room. A disjointed part of Steve’s brain registers the tomcat-like grace of his guest’s movements, all cocksure elegance and the ability to be very deliberate about not giving a damn.

“I like what you’ve done with the place,” Tony says, looking about Steve’s room. Steve follows the path of his assessment: the bookcase, record player, the plaid-fabric chair; table and lamp. His unmade bed. Back to the table. “Kinda reminds me of thanksgiving at my grandparent’s.”

“You drop by just to check out the decor?”

It sounds a bit gruffer than Steve means it, but Tony doesn’t miss a beat. “It’s very... you,” he says with a shrug. With an offhand flourish, he tosses four small metal buckles on the table. “I made you something,” he says.

“Uh, thanks,” Steve says. He licks his lips. “What..?”

“Are they?” Tony finishes for him. “They’re for your shield. Save me having to dredge the Potomac next time you forget where you leave it. Magnets.”

“Magnets?”

Tony’s lips twitch. “Well, it’s a bit more than that. It’s somewhere between how I call the mark 43 and my best guess of how Thor’s hammer does its magic boomerang thing. These,” he picks up one of the metal plaques between pinched fingers and holds it up, “are keyed to your specific bioelectric signature. You put two on the back of your shield and the other two attach to your suit. The neuro-haptic interface will create a feedback process that means you can recall it through...”

“Magnets,” Steve repeats.

Tony tosses the piece back onto the table and grins ruefully. “Magnets, yeah.”

“Nice.”

Steve moves to Tony’s side, close enough to take one of the smooth metal plates - the same one Tony just put down - in his own hands. He turns it over a few times, seeing the room spin in reflection. Each touch makes his skin tingle. He startles as one of the remaining plates flies from the table and joins the piece in his hand, nuzzling up to it. “Hey!”

“Pretty cool, huh?”

“Very... cool,” Steve agrees. He places the two joined pieces of metal back down on the wood. As soon as he lets them go, they fall apart, their connection broken. “Thank you,” he says quietly.

Tony’s smile softens, an expression bordering fondness on his face. He reaches out in a gesture that is rapidly becoming familiar, to ruffle Steve’s hair. But, stood together, the action is stilted; Steve has a couple of inches on him even barefoot. A fraction too late he abandons it, but it’s not enough to avoid contact and his fingers brush against the short hairs at Steve’s temple and down the line of his jaw.

The noise Steve makes is a thing outside of his control. It’s an impulse, a frazzled nerve firing. An echo of what never was. He’s vaguely aware that his lips have parted and of the tide of blood breaking in his ears. The gap between them is so slight it would take less than a step to close it.

Then Tony is moving, but he’s not pressing forwards, he’s backing towards the door. Steve feels a giddy mix of disappointment and relief.

On the threshold, Tony falters. “Cap,” he says. He sucks his lower lip. “Steve.”

Steve exhales slowly. “I’m... I’m sorry,” he says.

Tony nods sharply. “Okay. Yeah, I get it,” he says and turns away.

Steve isn’t sure how he can, when he barely understands it himself. Maybe that’s why Tony is the smart one.


	8. Chapter 8

Wherever Tony finds himself, whether it’s a state-of-the art tech hub in Dubai or stooped over a fold-down table at the back of a Quinjet, Tony always thinks of his workstation as ‘the garage’. Because, sometimes, even futurists need a tradition, something that makes them feel _comfortable_. And right now, comfortable is something Tony would _love_ to be. Hell, not-awkward-enough-to-consider-repulsor-blasting-himself-into-unconsciousness would do. But at least working on the recall modules for Steve’s shield gives him something to focus on, and the dark-tinted goggles close his world down to the bright blue-white glow of vanadium/gallium alloy solder. Sadly, being a genius, even dealing with flux so hot is could burn straight through the bulkhead isn’t enough to stop Anthony. E. Stark from mentally cataloguing the list of his personal failures. 

When he was first scrubbed from the Avengers Initiative, one of the main criticisms that Fury had of him was his inability to ‘work well with others’. Which is... almost completely fair. But it doesn’t take into account that most people aren’t _worth_ working with. Most people are, in fact, morons. Find Tony someone who isn’t a moron, and he will happily work with them. Like Bruce. Tony actively enjoys throwing ideas around with him, working on problems, making things better. The frisson of danger that comes from knowing pissing him off could result in extremely aggressive remodelling is just the cherry on top. 

And intelligence isn’t the only criteria, before any accusations of intellectual snobbery are levelled against him. Rhodey, for example, could never be considered an intellectual. What he is though, is sharp; determined and prepared to call bullshit when he smells it. Pep’s another. Whatever history they share and however the future plays out, she will always make Tony a better person. All three have earned Tony’s time and, oh alright, _respect_.

Which takes him right back to Steve. At first, Tony had classed him in with the masses. Sure he was physically impressive, but so what? Any idiot can get experimented on. Tony had seen him as representing an archaic and obsolete obsession with iconography, with _heroes_ that were unattainably _perfect_. Tony does not trust _perfect_. It’s... boring.

But Steve had not stayed boring. Jailbreaking Fury’s Phase Two weaponry had been a good start, as had seeing his fast and hard fighting style up close. But the thing that had moved him from column A to column B was ordering the portal shut with Tony still inside it. The instruction had been the last thing Tony had heard before everything went black. It might seem a strange thing to build a relationship on, but that act alone had convinced Tony that Steve was something more than a hero. A hero would have tried to save everyone; no-one gets left behind and all that crap. It possibly says something unflattering about Tony that leaving him to die cold and alone in interdimensional space should inspire such confidence but, well... there you go. Tony Stark is a bit messed up. No shit.

None of that, however, explains what happened earlier. Tony has been aware for some time that his and Steve’s friendship has... shifted. The loss of SHIELD changed a lot of things. Suddenly, they had the chance to do _more_ , together. Captain America and Iron Man were Avengers, but Steve Rogers and Tony Stark were _partners_. They needed each other in a way that bled over from professional to personal and back again until the two tangled together. For Tony, at least. This man, this _good_ man has come to mean more to Tony than any hero could, and maybe more than any friend _should_. Because Tony; he’s not from a bygone era. He grew up in the 70s; listening to Led Zepplin and Patti Smith, watching Maude and Charlie’s Angels, seeing San Francisco burn and Washington swell with a hundred thousand voices that said “we are here”. Tony _knows_ the score. But Steve? How can he. And that’s why what Tony oh-so-very-nearly did in Steve’s room just hours earlier makes him an absolute, 100%, grade A...

“Asshole!” he says aloud, tearing off the now-steaming glove, the fine welding laser shutting off the second he drops it and thumping dully into the concaved well of the shield.

“Everything alright back there?” Clint calls from the cockpit.

“Fine. Just peachy,” Tony shouts back, sucking his index finger where the heat transfer was enough to scald.

Evidently unsatisfied, Natasha stalks into the rear of the jet. “You done sulking?” she says.

“What?” he replies, pushing his goggle up onto his forehead.

She places her hands on her hips. “You’ve been stinking the place out since we took off. You gonna tell me what’s up or do I have to send Cap back here?”

“Wouldn’t you rather beat it out of me?” Tony replies, pulling off the other glove and throwing the pair into a dark corner. The slight wobble of hopefulness in his voice rings plaintively in his ears.

“Damn, Stark,” she says, “Is this your way of saying you’re into kinky stuff? Because I’m flattered, but wouldn’t you be better off buying Pepper a riding crop or something?”

“What? No!” Tony says, nose scrunching. He knows he should be making a joke now, something just the wrong side of the line of good taste, but he just... can’t. “No,” he repeats more quietly.

Natasha’s brow twitches. “No?”

“No,” Tony replies with a slight shake of his head.

“The two of you..?”

“Yeah.”

“Oh.”

Natasha nods her head slowly, as though completing a puzzle, but she’s the first to react to the polite cough that comes from their side.

“We’re about twenty minutes out,” Steve - no, right now Tony needs him to be the Cap - says. “I want... I thought we could all go over the plan one last time.”

Tony rubs the back of his neck. Natasha has pulled back, eyes still tracking between him and the Cap. “Yeah, sure,” he says. “And I, uh, finished with your shield.”

“Oh, great, thanks,” Cap replies, his mouth quirking awkwardly half-way to a smile. “Shall I..?”

“Try it out. Yeah. Hang on.”

Tony unclamps the shield from his workstation, tipping out the now-cold laser torch. He hands Cap the glove studs to affix either side of the leather and places the shield on the floor.

“How do I turn them on?” Cap says.

“Soon as they’re in contact with your skin, they’re activated.”

Cap braces his arm, held over the shield. The shield rocks gently, then flies up and locks in position. He shakes his guarded arm to test the strength of the connection and the shield holds fast, but when he takes it in his other hand, it comes away easily. He looks like a kid at a magic show and Tony damns the slight flutter in his chest.

“Amazing,” Cap says, shaking his head. He takes two short steps closer to Tony and puts a hand to his arm. It isn’t his usual, manly clap - the ‘gee, pal’ slap of camaraderie - but something softer. His gloved fingers trail down the skin of Tony’s forearm and over the bump of his wrist. For a crazy moment, Tony thinks Steve is going to take his hand. But that’s preposterous, nor does it happen. Tony pulls back, eyes finally flickering away from Steve’s steady gaze.

“You mention something about ‘plan of attack’, Cap?” Natasha interrupts. Oh God, Tony had forgotten she was even there. Situation awareness, Stark.

Steve coughs lightly, sounding as sheepish as Tony feels. “If you’d both care to come up to the fore?” he says.

“I’ll join you in a second,” Natasha says. “Just want to check I’ve packed my lip gloss.”

It’s a silly conceit and no-one who knows her would believe her, but Cap seems more than ready just to let it go. Tony follows him towards the cockpit, but darts a quick glance back over his shoulder on the way. Natasha is stood, arms folded and fingers tapping her lean bicep; just watching.

Tony has never longed to get shot at by Hydra more in his life.

****

They did it. No, not just got shot at: all of it. The celestial penis extension that is Loki’s sceptre is in their possession and Strucker is tied and tagged and they’ve called mom for a pick-up. Mission achieved.

As a team, they know a win when they get one. Even Clint is in relative good spirits, although that’s probably something more to do with Sister Morphine than strategic goals. Bruce reckons the arrow-wielding pain in the nutsack will be fine but, even still, Tony has been red-lining the engines since take-off. They’re now up to mach 3.23 and will be back at the Tower in T-minus 58 minutes. Because the way Tony sees it, better an international incident than sorry.

Truth be told, there’s no need for Tony to be sat in the cockpit; JARVIS is more than capable of piloting the jet at altitude - even at 108% output. But he’s tried ‘mingling’, and all it did was bring an acid taste to the back of his throat. Thor looking like he’s about to break out in bro-fists is bad enough, but it’s the quiet pride that Steve is exuding that’s making Tony’s stomach roll. Steve thinks that this is what they’ve been working towards and that they’ve succeeded as a team. It’s proof to him that, together, the Avengers can do anything.

But Tony, of course, knows the truth. He feels the precipice they walk along all around him and he’s _seen_ what happens when they fall. Because it isn’t a matter of ‘if’, just how far. Normally, Tony isn’t one for predetermination bullshit, but the future _is_ out there. The whole world saw that for the first time in New York, and Tony just got a teaser trailer of the sequel. And, as they are now, there’s only one thing the Avengers end up doing together. Tony shudders as he remembers that cold, barren world; walking among the bodies of his friends and knowing he was alone. He exhales shakily, closing his eyes.

He startles at the sensation of a hand on his shoulder. He twists to see the only person it could be. Steve looks back down at him. He is still in his suit, but has taken off the cap and gloves. His hand sits at the juncture of Tony’s shoulder and neck, and Tony can feel the heat of Steve’s skin where the cotton of his t-shirt breaks. He is so warm. Warm and full of life. It’s enough to make Tony want to fall against him, to press his ear to Steve’s chest and hear the super-soldier’s heart beat. The ferocity of that urge is almost overwhelming.

“Your modifications worked well,” Steve says.

Tong swallows. He strikes what he hope is a convincingly smug smile. “Was there ever any doubt?”

Steve shakes his head. “Not from me,” he says. He sighs. His little finger twitches and it brushes against Tony’s neck. “Wish I could’ve done more to help Barton, though.”

Tony shrugs, which has the effect of Steve removing his hand from his shoulder. A corner of Tony’s mind mourns the loss of contact and warmth. “Clint will be fine. I’ve seen Cho in action.”

“Should’ve prepared us for the possibility of enhanceds after we found that biolab. We know Hydra have been trying to create their own human weapons, and Loki’s staff gave them the power to do it.”

“Even knowing all that, there’s no guarantee anything would have played out any different. Or it could have gone worse.”

Slowly, Steve nods. “You’re right. Everyone will live to fight another day.”

Tony releases a long sigh. “Think we can make it they day _after_ tomorrow? Maybe even a week next Tuesday?”

Steve chuckles. “No promises. But I hear talk of a party three days from now. I think we could postpone the end of the world until then.”

It’s a joke, it’s only a joke, but Tony has to fight back a wave of nausea. “You bringing a date to our little shindig?” he asks.

Steve blushes. “Thought I’d invite some of the guys from the VA if that’s okay with you.”

“More the merrier.”

“What about you?” Steve asks quietly. “I didn’t mean to listen in before, but am I right in thinking..?”

“That I’ll be flying solo? Yep.” Tony’s shrug is brusque, business-like. He might as well have told Steve he had cheese salad for lunch. Because how are you supposed to explain that while he and Pep will always love and look after each other, them being ‘together’ is no longer a part of that? Expecting anyone to believe that he didn’t do something to drive her away borders on the fantastical, especially considering Tony finds it hard to buy into himself half the time.

The honest empathy in Steve’s face makes it difficult to stay detached. Tony’s vision wobbles slightly at the edges, and that’s just _ridiculous_ , because he has _dealt_ with this.

“I’m sorry, Tony,” Steve says. “You two were good together.”

Tony takes a deep breath. “We still are. Just in a different way.”

Slowly, Steve nods. And, to Tony’s surprise, he looks like he understands. It’s... Comforting is the wrong word. Humbling, maybe. Sometimes it’s easy to forget that Steve has lost as much, if not more, than any of them. That he still has it in him to feel compassion, to _care_ about other people’s pain, is a testament to the kind of guy he is. That’s not something that comes from the serum or the uniform, it’s all Steve. And it makes you want to do better yourself. Do more. Do something.

He clenches his fists at the first racing of his heart. God damn it, not this again. “JARVIS, how far are we out?” he grunts.

“Final approach to the tower initiated, Sir,” JARVIS replies.

“Okay,” Tony says, flipping a switch to return to manual control and turning the pilot’s chair centre-forward. “Ease us up to one-half sound and tell the med team to wait on the pad.”

“I, uh... should leave you to it,” Steve says from behind him.

Tony nods a silent reply, not trusting his voice to be steady. He dips the nose of the Quinjet below the cloud cover and the East Coast stretches out in front of him, distant skyscrapers rising up like a glittering wall in the low slung sun. It truly is beautiful and precious. 

Tony will find a way to keep it that way.

****

“Do you realise you’re acting weird.”

Tony and Bruce have been silently staring into their respective screens in Banner’s lab for the last six hours, when Bruce decides that that little nugget is the conversation starter they need.

Tony doesn’t look up. “If I realise I’m acting weird, then it isn’t weird,” he says. “It’s conscious eccentricity.”

Bruce looks up, and Tony realised that holographic screens have one drawback, in that you can’t use them to hide behind.

“So which is it?” Bruce asks.

Tony sighs as he straightens from his stooped position. “Weird, _how_?”

“Ignoring the fact that you’re trying to integrate trans-dimensional tech into an army of AI soldiers so that you can save the world from aliens?”

“Leaving that to one side.”

Bruce cocks his head to one side, pushing his own console gently away. “Well how about every time Steve comes down to check on us, you get all...” He wafts a finger in a non-descript pattern.

“Weird?” Tony suggests.

“Yeah, that.”

Tony’s eyes drift closed. They’ve been in possession of the sceptre for the last fifty-four hours. He and Bruce have worked forty-eight, maybe forty-nine, of those. So if he’s a bit short when people show up asking questions - particularly questions he can’t answer - then maybe that’s why. Does it have to be anything more? Does it, for example, have to have anything to do with the lurch of guilt he feels every time he has to lie to Steve’s face? Or maybe it’s what waits for Tony behind his drooping eyelids: visions that oscillate between the terrifying and exhilarating, each setting his heart beating wildly in equal measure? 

Could it be because his internal monologue now has more question marks in it than even the tawdriest piece of expositional writing?

Okay, now he _is_ being weird. He takes a deep breath and lets it go slowly. “So what’s your take on it, _Doctor_ Banner?” he says.

“Hey,” Bruce replies, holding up his hands defensively. “I’m just making an observation.”

Tony stalks across the lab to Bruce’s side. His legs feel stiff and non-compliant. “No,” he chastises, “c’mon, you started this.” He pulls himself up onto the desk, sitting far enough back from the edge to let his legs dangle. 

Bruce’s brown eyes shift nervously. “Well, it’s just... you know. I think you’re worried about disappointing him.”

“That’s another reason why it’s best we sit on this until we know if it’s possible. _If_ we get a viable simulation, then we can bring him in: once we have all the facts.”

“And that doesn’t bother you?”

The pause is a fraction of a second too long and Tony knows it. “What makes you think it would?”

Bruce’s brown eyes run over him, his mouth slightly parted and lower lip drawn in by the barest flash of tooth. Tony’s seen that look enough times to know what it means: Bruce is weighing what he has to say and deciding whether to say it. For someone like Tony, who tends to speak as he thinks, it’s a vaguely frustrating habit. “Just spit it out,” he grumbles.

A delicate flush creeps up Bruce’s neck. A frown flashes across his brow before his expression softens. “You’re acting like you’re scared.”

Tony has to snort at that. “Steve couldn’t scare me if he dressed up as an Amish clown.”

“Skipping over what’s wrong with that statement,” Bruce says, “I don’t mean you’re scared _of_ him. I mean you’re scared of...” He rubs a hand over his face and makes a muffled grunt. “...of your feelings for him,” he finishes.

Now would be a great time to laugh, to tell Bruce he’s talking out of his big, sometimes-green ass. Instead, some twisted part of Tony decides to lie back, straight across Bruce’s workstation. “Okay,” he says, “Let’s go. We’ve not had a session for a while.”

“I’ve told you before, I’m not _that_ kind of doctor.” Bruce shakes his head despairingly.

“Any yet you just used the word ‘feelings’.”

Bruce scratches his nose absently, “Yeah, I guess I did.”

“You want to switch positions?” Tony offers. “Maybe talk about some of your _feelings_?”

“Excuse me?”

Tony smirks slyly. “About lil’ Miss Incey Wincey?”

“If she ever heard you call her that, she would kill you with just a finger. Slowly,” Bruce reminds.

Tony shrugs against the surface of the table. “But you don’t deny you have feelings for her?” he says.

Bruce frowns and pushes himself back from the table, getting to his feet. He runs his fingers through his curly hair. “What’s to deny? She’s young, beautiful, smart. Deadly. Kind of goofy,” he adds with a small smile that fades all-to-quickly to wistful. “Totally out of my league. So, nothing doing.”

“She digs you,” Tony points out. 

Bruce’s skin flushes at that. “Maybe,” he admits, “A little bit. But what with... my condition, I have... I mean, I can’t...”

“My God, you’re a eunuch,” Tony says, lifting himself up on his elbows.

Bruce laughs. “Oh, if only,” he says. “But no.”

“So when you say you _can’t_ , you mean...”

“I can’t risk it,” Bruce replies. “Too dangerous.”

Tony pouts. “So...” he says thoughtfully, “not even ‘alone time’?”

“We are not having this discussion.”

“Spoil sport.”

“You ready to tell me about you and Cap now?” Bruce says, folding his arms and sitting back.

Tony’s heart skips. Damn it. Trust Banner to know how to do the _verbal_ switcharoo. “There _is_ no ‘me and Cap’,” he says.

“But you wish there were?” 

Tony returns to a horizontal position, one arm lifted behind his head as a cushion. Bruce’s voice is so level, irresistibly equitable. If it were anyone else, at any other time, Tony would tell them to stick it. But he doesn’t have the fight in him just now; he’s too tired and frustrated by failure. 

“I don’t know,” he says quietly. He turns his head to the side and studies Bruce’s face. The other man’s expression is neutral, placid. For all his insistence that he doesn’t have the temperament to deal with other people’s problems, he’s doing a damn good job of looking like he _cares_.

Tony takes a deep breath. “It’s just... half the time I could happily throttle him, you know? All that ‘perfect soldier’ crap. Follow orders, hold the line. Do you know how frustrating it is to have to deal with someone who thinks they’re perpetually in the right?”

“I have some idea,” Bruce says, not quite managing to keep a smirk in check.

Tony tuts. “I am right. Mostly.”

“Uh-huh,” Bruce agrees. “So that’s half the time. What about the other half?”

“The other half,” Tony sighs, “I don’t know. I like him. He’s a really good guy. One of the best. Not that I’m not fond of you, too, big feller,” he says, stretching up and poking Bruce in the shoulder fondly. “But, with Steve, it’s...”

“Different?” Bruce suggests.

“Different is a good word, yeah,” Tony agrees.

Bruce shrugs. “So have you, I dunno, talked to him about it?”

Tony chuckles. “Oh, sure. We have heart to hearts all the time.” The look Bruce gives him is enough to make the back of his neck get hot. “Well, not about stuff like that.”

“Why not?”

“You’ve met Steve, right? Mr. Class of ’36? I’m pretty sure he doesn’t want to hear it.”

“And I think you’re judging him on when he’s from rather than who he is,” Bruce says. His voice carries just a hint of scolding in it. “He didn’t even blink when he met Maria’s wife last Christmas.”

“Finding out your colleague is a lesbian and dealing with your buddy telling you he has _feelings_ for you are not even in the same ballpark,” Tony points out.

“And again you’re making an assumption.”

“Huh?”

“That the attention wouldn’t be wanted.”

Tony turns his head again, giving Bruce a very long blast of his ‘are you serious’ face.

“We all see it, Tony,” Bruce says. “The way Steve treats you... _that’s_ different to how he is with the rest of us.”

“Well, yeah. I’m the paycheque.”

Bruce shakes his head. “He looks to you for a hell of a lot more than money. He values _you_ , not your bank account.”

Tony feels his heart flutter a little and decides this is easier with his eyes closed. “Even if that were true, and I am absolutely not saying that it is, what do I do about it?” He licks his lips. “What would _you_ do?”

He startles at the novel sensation of Bruce’s warm, slightly rough fingers pressed to the skin of his forearm. He opens his eyes and stares into his friend’s face hopefully.

“I’d talk to him,” Bruce says quietly.

Moments pass, heavy moments where Tony actually allows himself to consider the possibility. Bruce’s hand still rests on his arm and Tony would swear he feels the slow, steady, _thump-thump-thump_ of the other man’s pulse infusing him with an eerie calm. Then, his breath catches and he begins to laugh; really, really laugh.

Bruce pulls his hand back, his eyebrows twitching in evident confusion. “If this has all been you winding me up...” he says.

Tony shakes his head. An actual tear swells and bursts its banks, tickling as follows a crease in his scrunched up face. “No, no it isn’t that,” he gasps between giggles. “I just realised that I’m asking relationship advice from the only guy on the planet who _literally_ gets a raging hard-on.”

“Oh, way to ruin the moment, Stark,” Bruce says dryly, but flashes a small, self-conscious grin with it. “Now do you want to get your ass off my calculations?”

Tony pushes himself upright and slips off the edge of the desk, spilling paper as he goes. His legs shoot with pins and needles that spread into numbness about the rump. He stretches, yawning as Bruce primps his printouts back into order. “Thanks, doc,” he says, smoothing down his rucked-up t-shirt. “Think we really made progress today.”

Bruce sighs an entirely untherapist-like sigh. “So, you’ll do it? Talk to him?”

“About this? Maybe.”

“And what about Ultron?”

Tony frowns. “No.”

Bruce’s fingers flutter against the metal desk. “There’s some things even he might not forgive.”

“If it works, he’ll forgive,” Tony says with a shrug. “And if it doesn’t, he never needs to know.”

“Because they’re the only two options,” Bruce replies.

“Yup,” Tony says with a shrug. His pins and needles have subsided enough for him to return to his own station, passing his hand through the holo-emitter’s activation area as he goes. The HUD springs back into life, sending a blue glow across the lab. Tony casts an eye over the last set of results. Nothing.

“You’re really not great at relationships, are you?” Bruce asks from behind him.

Tony continues to study the readouts. “I’m sorry, I thought we’d been introduced. Doctor Pot, my name is Kettle.”

He hears Bruce grumble, and then chuckle breathily. Seconds later, a set of suggested new parameters pops up on Tony’s screen. The subject line is ‘asshat’.

“J,” Tony calls, inputting the figures to the matrix. “Begin integration simulation 51.”


	9. Chapter 9

Steve buttons his best blue shirt in the mirror and tucks it tidily into his pressed slacks. He checks out his neatly groomed hair, front and sides. Yep, he’d definitely pass muster.

He sighs. That’s not the point, is it? He’s going to a party, not an inspection drill. A long time ago, the Christmas of 1944 to be precise, Bucky had told him he needed to have more fun. Take off the uniform and be Steve Rogers and not the Captain every now and again.

Well, it’s 71 years since Steve last voluntarily attended a party. Turns out he’s better at following some instructions than others.

On a whim, he teases his hair out of its fixed position into something more natural. 

Better, but still a bit starched. 

He unbuttons his cuffs and rolls them up. 

It’s definitely more casual. 

Then he tries unfastening a second button on his shirt. After a cursory glance, he refastens it. No need to go crazy there, Rogers. 

As he slips his socked feet into his shoes, he remembers that night back in ’44. He and Buck had spent most of the evening teetering on the edge of the party, just watching the others dance. Every now and again, Bucky would dart off to get the band to play something slower, or faster, or make sure everyone had plenty to drink. Steve let them sparkle around him; the girls in their best frocks, the guys spruced up, some shaved and bathed for the first time in a couple of weeks. And the war... for one night only, everyone forgot it. Well, almost everyone. Steve knew that some of these boys would be being sent back out at first light, and not all would come back. 

He’d put his arm around Bucky’s shoulder. He could never do that when he was smaller. Buck had leaned into it, just a fraction. No-one looked at them twice and why should they? Not when there was beer, and laughter and the Lindy-hop to be done. He’d tried to get Bucky to join in, but his companion had just smiled that half-smile of his and said he was happy where he was.

Steve wonders if Buck would have been so eager to waste that night if he’d known it was the last party of his life. Three weeks later, he’d been gone. The old, sick feeling hits Steve’s stomach almost powerfully enough to stagger him. He takes a deep breath. He’d mourned Bucky as dead. He’d mourned and he’d carried on. Because that’s what he had to do. And then he died himself. He remembers those last few moments in the ice, before the darkness took him. He’d not even felt cold.

Except he hadn’t died, and neither had Bucky. They’d both been on ice in one way or another. And even though Bucky had come out of his frozen dreams while Steve stayed asleep, he doubts the Soviets gave him much time to _live_.

Maybe Sam will have something new to tell him tonight. There hasn’t been much time for Steve to follow up on the sightings so far, but he knows Sam’s been out there, chasing leads. Steve shakes his head. He’s not sure quite what he’s done to deserve such good people around him, either back in the day or now, but he thanks whatever powers are out there for them.

****

Humble. If there’s one thing you absolutely couldn’t call this great, thrusting tower he lives in, it’s humble. But Steve can just about call it home. After all, ‘home’ has always been a mutable concept for him. Was home the apartment he grew up in? Was it Bucky’s house? He’d spent at least as much time there. Is home Brooklyn? New York? A lot of the guys overseas romanticised the city, called it ‘her’. Talked about it like it was a girl waiting for them with open arms. There was even a very rude song about what the Statue of Liberty keeps up her robe. He’d thought; maybe home was Peggy. Maybe it was that sense of belonging he got when he looked in her eyes, or the completeness he felt when he fought _for her_. But Peggy didn’t _need_ him to fight on her behalf. He’s seen the records; she had her own battles, helped found SHIELD, loved a man and lived a life. He visits her sometimes, but it’s hard. Because if that ever _was_ meant to be his home, it isn’t now.

“Hey. Hey, Steve. You with me?” Sam asks, briefly touching Steve’s forearm with the same gentle consideration as is in his voice.

“Huh?” Steve replies.

Sam smiles crookedly. “I asked if you wanted to hear that ghost story now.”

“Oh, yeah, sure.” Steve gestures to an empty clique of chairs at the rear of the mezzanine. 

They take their seats. Sam ducks forward, his beer slung between his spread legs. “So, your boy’s being weird,” he says quietly.

“Sam, I have a device in my pocket that can access virtually every piece of human knowledge within a couple of seconds,” Steve drawls, “you’re gonna have to define ‘weird’ for the old guy.”

Sam takes a pull of his beer and sighs deeply. “It’s like he’s getting easier to track but harder to find. Moving place to place faster than I can keep up, but not hiding where he’s been anymore.”

Steve nods. He takes a sip of his own drink. “How so?”

“Like, first I hear there’s been a bar fight in some dive just outside Providence. Guy says his assailant had a robot arm: ‘like Ironman’s but way cooler’ I believe was the phrase.”

Steve raises an eyebrow.

“Yeah, well the guy was pretty tanked but it was enough to make me think of our missing person. So I keep my ear to the ground. A few days later, some mystery ‘hero’ pulls a crashed car off a kid with his bare hands, in front of a dozen witnesses, thirty miles away from the first sighting. Day after, twenty miles due north again, fire department gets a call to attend a warehouse blaze. When they get there, they find a half-dozen guys tied up out front, pretty as you put a bow on them.”

“And you think that’s...” Steve has to stop himself from saying the name aloud. He scootches forward and drops his tone to barely above a whisper. “You think that’s him.”

Sam spreads his arms wide and shrugs. “I dunno. But reading between the lines, these guys all get transferred under heavy guard to DC the next day and local papers reported the fire was caused by a ‘lightning strike’. So unless your buddy Thor there...”

Steve shakes his head.

“So what’s _your_ take on it?” Sam asks. “You know him better than me.”

Steve nods as he processes the information. “He’s remembering who he is,” he asserts. “He was a good man. He’s trying to do good things.”

“The guy in Providence got two broken ribs, a cracked jaw and a concussion.”

“It’s a work in progress,” Steve admits. “But our guy’s been in enemy hands for over 70 years. He’s not just trying to make sense of the modern world, he’s trying to reconcile his place in it.”

Sam nods thoughtfully. “Feller did say Bucky paid his bar tab after hitting him.”

Steve sucks in a sharp breath and Sam’s eyes go wide in response. 

“Oh, man. Cap, I’m sorry, it just...”

In those few seconds, Steve has already assessed the surroundings. His sharp senses pinpoint every person to whom that name might mean anything. Tony and Thor are bickering by the bar. Bruce is talking to Helen Cho out on the balcony, he’s too far away to hear what it’s about but the frequencies that are stripped from their voices tell Steve that there is glass between them. Clint, Natasha and Maria Hill are over by the piano, apparently rating the butts of all the guests. Clint has just given Tony a 7, apparently, which is more than a little unsettling. But none of them are anywhere near close enough to have picked up on Sam’s slip. 

“It’s okay,” he says. “No need to apologise. You’ve done great work, and I appreciate it.” He raises his beer to Sam.

A nervous grin breaks out on the other man’s face. He raises his own bottle in a bashful salute. “I watched a lot of cop shows growing up.”

They both take a mouthful of beer. Their eyes meet. The mouthful becomes a pull, the pull becomes a drain and...

Sam splutters, wiping his chin. “I don’t even know why you drink this stuff if you can’t get drunk off of it.”

Steve puts his empty bottle down on a glass side table. “It’s nice to feel normal once in a while,” he says.

“Uh huh,” Sam says with a twitch of his eyebrow. “So now maybe you’ve found your magic wand thing, you can go looking for your superteched buddy with some of your fancy Avenger doodads?”

“Point taken,” Steve replies.

****

Well this is... this is kinda new. Steve pokes his own cheek.

A small smile creeps out and spreads itself over his very slightly numb face. He has to search his memory back to... oh hell, a long time ago, to recall the last time he felt this sensation. 

He’s got a buzz on. 

Has to be whatever that stuff Thor gave him. _Has_ to be. He’s only had three beers. Four beers? He’s had some beers. Certainly not enough to fox his super-soldier metabolism. Whatever it is though, Steve thinks he likes it. It’s like stepping in a hot shower after a run, feeling everything uncurl. He’d not consciously been aware of the tension he’d been carrying, except now; by its absence. 

He looks out of the curved sweep of glass, past the Chrysler building, across Midtown and towards the Hudson. The sun has dropped below the buildings, but the ripples in the clouds still catch the final rose gold rays and send them flinging out across a deepening sky. 

“You enjoying yourself, Cap?”

Steve refocuses his eyes from the distance to see Tony’s reflection in the glass beside him. He turns his head as Tony takes a step closer, coming to rest a few inches to his left, a bare gap that feels closer than it looks.

“Hey Tony,” he says. “Beautiful night.”

Tony’s face twitches; half amusement, half pleasure. His gaze flick sideways, to the skyline, and then returns to Caps face. “Yeah,” he agrees. Then his posture tightens, so slight a movement that a less well-trained eye might miss it. “Look, do you have some time?”

Steve shrugs slightly. “It’s a party, I’ve got nothing but time for you.”

Tony cocks his head just a fraction to the side, a curious frown creasing his brow for a just a second. “O-kay,” he says. “Great. You, uh, care to join me in my suite?”

“Your suite?”

“I have a suite. You know I have a suite.”

“I _know_ you have a suite,” Steve replies, “But you want to talk there?”

“Yeah,” Tony says, jerking his head towards the private elevator that goes up to the penthouse. “C’mon.”

A flash of inspiration hits Steve. “I’m just going to grab another beer,” he says. “I’ll meet you at the elevator.”

The frown is back, slightly more pronounced than before. “Alright.”

Steve watches him go for a few seconds. Tony’s wearing a dark three-piece, although his jacket’s been discarded along the way. The neat tailoring of his waistcoat draws attention to his narrow waist and the curve of his back. The matching trousers fit like thousand dollar trousers ought to, accentuating his lean flanks with just the right level of cling.

Clint’s wrong. It’s definitely an eight.

Steve scoops up a beer from a nearby table and follows.

****

“I’ll have an opener somewhere in here,” Tony says as the doors to the elevator slide open on the penthouse. He wafts Steve into the interior. “Go on, I’ll find it. Make yourself at home.” He disappears off behind a room separator and Steve can hear him rummaging through drawers.

Moving further in, Steve casts an eye over Tony’s suite. It’s decorated simply but elegantly: polished marble flooring reflecting the pinprick spotlights above, broken only where soft-looking throw rugs nestle up to the furniture. The space is divided into dedicated areas; a central lounge facing where the elevator, a small set of steps up to where the glass follows the same sweep as the floors below. At the far end, where it turns, there is an old, wooden desk butted up to window. Steve walks towards it. Up close, he realises he recognises it. It’s the same desk Howard used to keep in his office, wood perhaps a few shades darker now from age and use. Steve’s fingers brush against a familiar brass plaque, tarnished but the engraved H.E.S still visible. A faded picture in an unremarkable frame is pushed to the back of the desk. It’s of a small boy, dark haired and grinning, a fishing rod in his hand and a kerchief about his neck.

Steve turns, clearing his throat. He can’t explain the slight sting in his eyes so he blinks until it subsides. He realises that he’s now facing another intimate piece of furniture; Tony’s bed, sited at the other end of the glass arc. It’s neatly made, with crisp white sheets covering its generous width. His legs feel a little too long as he finds himself walking towards it. He should go back to the lounge. But what he should do and what he wants to do are out of alignment. Because he wants... something. He doesn’t know exactly what. Perhaps just not to be the Cap tonight; not treating everything as a strategy to be planned out. Curiously, he runs his fingers over the curved edge of the sheet where it drapes over the edge of the mattress. The cotton is soft, almost silken. 

He startles at the sound of a cough behind him, turning and already feeling heat in his cheeks.

“All in order?” Tony asks, an eyebrow crooked at him. “Dad always insisted on hospital corners.”

“You make it yourself?” Steve replies, as much as something to say as to know the answer.

Tony holds out a bottle opener. “I might be rich now, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t have to work to earn my pocket money back in the day.” He shrugs. “Some things stick.”

Steve takes the proffered object and uses it to flick open his beer. He tidies the opener and the bottlecap on a small shelf and takes a generous pull of his drink, closing his eyes briefly to savour the spread of fizzy lightness on his tongue and on through his veins. When he reopens his eyes, Tony is watching him, his arms folded and head tipped just slightly to one side.

Steve is used to people looking to him, even looking _up_ to him. But Tony isn’t doing that. He’s just looking _at_ him.

It’s foolish, Steve knows it is, but he lowers himself to the edge of the bed. Tony’s eyes follow him down. He puts the bottle by his feet and leans back slightly, his weight held by spread arms, palms flat to the supple cotton. He feels the tension of his shirt as it pulls tight across his chest.

And Tony is still watching.

Steve returns his steady gaze. “You wanted something?” he asks. He almost can’t believe they’re his words, except that - while the rest of the world might have forgotten the punk kid who didn’t know when to keep his mouth shut - Steve knows he’s not gone altogether.

Tony sways, as though he’s on the very limits of an elastic cord. “Steve,” he says, and his voice is thick yet brittle, caramel dropped into cool water. “Are you... alright?”

“Yeah,” Steve replies. And he means it. For once, he _really_ means it. “Why’d you ask?”

“It’s just... you’re smiling a lot.”

“And that’s a problem?”

Tony’s lips twitch. “You’re also sat on my bed,” he points out.

“It’s comfy, a bit soft for my liking but...”

A thoroughly perplexed half-smile wobbles over Tony’s face. “Captain Rogers, are you drunk?” he asks.

Steve licks his lips. “Lil’ bit,” he admits.

A small chuckle escapes Tony’s lips. He stifles it and then breaks again. “Of course you are,” he says. He giggles - it’s definitely a giggle now - and runs a hand through his hair. “Of course. I thought you couldn’t do that?”

“Apparently Asgardian spirit doesn’t work like regular alcohol.”

“Oh, Thor is just my _favourite_ tonight,” Tony says. He folds his arms and turns to look out the window.

Steve gives himself one moment of frustration, leaning forward and running both palms over his face. Then he takes a deep breath and stands. He moves so he is behind Tony, close enough to feel the tension in the sweep of the other man’s spine. Then Tony eases a fraction, and leans back against Steve’s chest. A sudden sense of rightness flashes through Steve. The two of them aligned; together: this is what he wants. He can see the pulse in Tony’s neck jumping; feel the heat of him; smell the sandalwood of his aftershave. He makes to place a cautious hand to a slender hip, but at the slightest brush of his fingers he feels Tony jerk, then pull away.

“So, I wanted to talk to you about something,” Tony says, and the controlled flatness of his voice makes Steve’s stomach twist. Whatever _this_ almost was, that tone says it’s done now. 

Steve takes a deep breath. “So talk,” he says. He clasps his hands behind his back and sets his shoulders straight.

Tony turns to face him. He’s barely three feet away but the distance feels immeasurable. “Maybe it can wait.” 

“It seemed like it was important to you.” 

Tony’s eyes flutter closed for a moment, lashes dark against his cheeks. The crease in his brow deepens briefly, and he looks almost beatific. Then his eyes open and settle on Steve’s face. “It was...” His larynx bobs. “It’s about Bruce and Nat.”

Steve is taken aback by that. Of any of the things he thought might be coming, that wasn’t one. “Oh, uh...”

“You know they’ve gotten close, right? I mean, _close_ close.”

“Well, I know they’ve been spending time together.” Steve shrugs. “Anything else is between them.”

“I think you should talk to them about it.”

Steve shakes his head. “This isn’t the army,” he says. “It isn’t even SHIELD. If anything, the team is stronger for it.”

Something softens in Tony, the barest flicker of a smile pulling at his cheek. “I agree. It’s just... no-one wants to disappoint you, Cap.” 

“And you think I...” Steve catches himself. “You think _they_ think I disapprove of them being together?” 

“I’m just saying you should talk to them.”

Steve rubs the back of his neck. “I’m going to need another drink,” he grumbles.

“Well, your buddy Thor should be able to help with that,” Tony says.


	10. Chapter 10

It’s a long way into the short hours, and the party has drawn in on itself. Only those people calling the Tower home - even if only for the night - remain. Tony loves a good shindig; the noise, the swirling dance of bodies orbiting one another, the anonymity to be found in numbers. But gathered together in this little horseshoe, it’s easy to forget the empty space behind them; to imagine that they’re living the simple life, just pals kicking back together. It’s... _better_. More intimate.

Tony feels the creep of a flush prickle the back of his neck. Yeah, okay. The ‘intimate’ part is maybe a little awkward. His eyes flick to where Steve is lounging back against the cushions, head tilted back to the ceiling. He has a relaxed smile is spread across his face, eyes closed but evidently awake and listening to the chitchat surrounding him with pleasure. Normally so neat and precise, his clothes crease and tug around his torso. Tony follows the v-shaped creases down from his broad chest to his flat midriff and lower to...

Tony turns his attention rapidly back to the flute of warm champagne he’s been sipping for that last two hours. He takes a few slow breaths.

He wants him.

Oh, by Thor’s well-polished hammer, that sounds weird even in Tony’s head. Because, yeah, while he isn’t _quite_ self-deluded enough to deny any more that he’s attracted to Steve, he’s never allowed it to get past recognition. No, shush, seriously. Tony spends most of his life envisioning the future, working the ‘what ifs’, but this is one thing he’s deliberately avoided imagining. Because he was so damn certain that it was a total no-go, never-gonna-happen, impossibility. The soft looks, the touches, those moments where the world wrapped in around them: it was Tony imbuing Steve’s old-fashioned, innocent intimacy with twenty-first century meaning.

Well, that assumption took a hit tonight, didn’t it? The image of Steve positioning himself on his bed hits with reeling force. There could be no mistaking what that meant. Tony swallows thickly. The memory of how close he’d come to just letting it happen is a bubble stretching his stomach. How easy it would have been to find himself between Steve’s legs, pushing him back onto the mattress, pressing their bodies; their mouths and desires together. He has some idea of how it might feel, training together means that the hardness of Steve’s body is not unfamiliar to him, but it’s the counterpoint softness that makes his breath hitch. The idea of Steve, loose and pliant beneath him is...

“Hey, Tony, I asked if you wanted another drink?”

Damn it, Rhodey. He was just getting to the good bit. “Uh, yeah. One of my beers, thanks.”

Rhodey nods his understanding. ‘My beers’ means the alcohol free ones. The ones that say ‘I’ve had enough and I know it’. He thinks he sees a proud twinkle in Rhodey’s eyes. Tony exhibiting self restraint is kind of new to them all. 

Almost as new as Steve getting drunk off Asgardian liquor. Hell, if Tony were still the man he had been even a few short years ago, this party would have gone with more of a _bang_.

It’s okay, he hates himself too.

And whereas, back in the way-back, those few moments (hours, Stark, hours) of pleasure might have been enough for him to throw caution to the wind, now... not so much. Steve had seemed to know what he was doing but who can tell how much is him and how much is Thor’s ‘special brew’.

It isn’t like he’d invited Steve up to his suite in order to have his wicked way with him, anyway. He’d decided that Banner was right; he needed to tell him about what he and Bruce are trying to achieve. The fact is, he _wants_ Steve to see how vital it is, why it matters so much to Tony. But noble sentiments are a bit hard to stick to when all you can think of is the solid feel of Steve’s chest against your back, his deft hands travelling over clothing, unfastening buttons, finding skin. He’d almost given himself over to it. No, that’s a lie. He had, if only for a moment. And in that short span of seconds, he could almost feel the resonance of Steve’s heartbeat thrumming through him, the dampness of the larger man’s breath against his neck, fingers pressing to his hip bone...

“You gonna take your drink, or am I just to stand here all night like your manservant?”

God _damn_ it, Rhodey. It’s like the man has some psychic cock-blocking superpower.

“Put it on the table,” Tony replies, offering him a less-than-appropriately-grateful smile.

Rhodey rolls his eyes and places the bottle in among the numerous other drunk and half-drunk beverages. Tony leans forward and scoops it up. As he sits back, he realises that Steve is looking at him sidelong. It’s not the best example of clandestine surveillance he’s ever seen, but it’s still obviously meant to go unnoticed. Tony smirks. He lifts his beer to Steve and waits for the subtlest pink flush to infuse the other man’s cheeks. Then he uses the tapered neck to direct Steve’s attention towards where Bruce and Natasha sit, engrossed in conversation. Steve smiles crookedly and lifts his own drink in bashful return.

Even if the bulk of the evening has been the bastard progeny of misunderstanding, misdirection and moonshine, seeing the two of them like that makes it a bit easier to take. 

At least a couple of Avengers might be getting some tonight.

****

Tony was wrong. They _all_ got some. A whole big clusterfuck of some. Which is maybe some people’s thing, but not Tony’s*. Frankly, if he’s going to have his ass handed to him, he’d really rather it wasn’t by a metal monstrosity masquerading as his global peacekeeping initiative.  
*At least, not in these circumstances.

He rubs his eyes, which does little more than transfer paper dust and print residue into them. “Son of a...” He blinks blearily. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees a familiar figure approaching his little corner of the lab. Great. Steve. Because what he needs right now is to be reminded of how much he screwed up.

“Stark,” Steve greets coolly, because apparently it’s like _that_.

“Captain,” Tony replies in kind. He sees the slightest wince crease Steve’s face and frowns at it. 

Steve pours himself a large glass of water and a coffee. He takes the water in one and chases it with a hefty swig of coffee. Belatedly, he seems to remember his manners. “You want..?”

Tony waves the offer away. “I’m good.”

Steve - no, wait, we’re going with Cap, aren’t we - leans heavily against a laden desk and sighs. His eyes flutter closed for a moment, and he looks, well, vulnerable. Like he’s forgotten there’s anyone else there.

Tony feels a little wobble in his chest, a little crack in his persecution complex. “You, uh... you okay Cap?” he asks quietly.

Steve opens his eyes. “Just a headache,” he replies in kind.

Pieces suddenly fall into place. “You’re hungover?”

A small groan escapes Steve’s lips. “Nothing I can’t shake off. Hopefully.”

“Sounds bad.”

“It’s not good,” Steve agrees.

“Well, I guess we all get what we deserve.”

“Do we?”

The way Steve says it... it isn’t confrontational. More wistful, like he’s really asking. Still, Tony bristles. “You think I don’t feel bad about what’s happened?” he says. “Ultron was meant to be perfect.”

Steve’s thin smile looks about as much as he can muster. “Then I think there’re a few glitches.”

“Thanks, Captain Obvious.”

Steve sighs and the muscles of his jaw ripple as they clench briefly. “Look, I don’t want to fight, Tony. First off, it hurts my head. Second, we can point fingers all we like, but what’s done is done and we have to figure out what to do about it.”

“And am I still a part of this _we_?”

A wave of what could be nausea passes over Steve’s face. “Of course you are.”

Tony shrugs slightly, blinking as a bit of that darn paper dust gets back in his eye. “Well, you know. Just checking.”

“Is that what you think?” Steve asks. He shakes his head sadly. “Tony, you dropped the ball. I’m not going to lie about that. But do you understand why? Do you get why the team’s upset at you?”

Tony grits his teeth, forcing a smile. “Enlighten me.”

“It’s because you did it without them. Without any of us,” Steve concludes quietly.

“Bruce knew,” Tony points out, although the hard stare he gets in return makes him wish he hadn’t.

“You didn’t tell _me_ ,” Steve says. He takes a step closer to Tony, bringing them bare inches from one another. “I’m supposed to be the leader of this team. This was something I needed to know.”

“I was going to tell you,” Tony says weakly.

“So why didn’t you?”

Tony licks his lips. He wonders how much of a damn fool he’d have to be to say ‘because you threw yourself at me and my brain stopped working right’. Thankfully, it’s slightly more of a damn fool than he is. And also... that’d not be fair. He’d withheld what he was doing well before what happened in his suite. Tony might be a prick, but he’s a self-aware prick.

“You might have said no,” he says softly.

“Maybe. But if you’d explained what you were trying to achieve, I _might_ have said yes.”

Tony’s chest tightens and he has to close his eyes against the insistency of Steve’s gaze. “That would have been worse,” he whispers. The words are jagged, hurting his throat. He opens his eyes again. “I need to believe you’re a better man than I am.”

Steve reaches out. His fingers meet Tony’s skin just above his wrist and ghost down the outer curve of his palm, tracing inward. The gentleness of his touch, the way their fingers brush and then curl together, sends white-hot shards flying through Tony’s blood. And, of all the people on the planet, Tony is eminently qualified to recognise that sensation.

“Not better,” Steve says. “Just a man.”

This is... this is patently ludicrous. They’re stood but ten foot away from the rest of the team and, so, yeah, Tony has built a pretty good box fort around himself, but all it would take is the wrong angle; a reflective surface and...

He shakes his hand free and busies it shuffling one stack of paper together with the next. He doesn’t even need to be looking up to know that Steve’s face has fallen. The tone of his companion’s voice says it all.

“I’m sorry, Tony,” Steve says.

Tony knows he should reciprocate, tell Steve he’s sorry too; now’s just not the time. But it’s just... If he says it, it comes too close to admitting he was wrong. And Tony can’t do that, because he wasn’t. It isn’t like he wanted Ultron to go egomaniacal killer on them all: he’d wanted it to _save_ them all. He still does.

“There’re a lot of files to go through here, Cap,” is what he says instead.

He hears the hard swallow of Steve knocking back the last of his coffee and the scrape of metal on metal as he pushes the empty cup back onto the station. Tony gives Steve a three second head start before looking up.

He’s just in time to catch Clint glower at him.

Go team.

****

 _Run and hide_. Hell, that feels like the story of Tony’s life. Responsibility, culpability, relationships, himself. Just keep running and hiding. 

But, right now, there’s not much else they can do. The Maximoff girl has seen to that. Thor is pacing about the jet like a caged tiger, fists clenching spasmodically. Natasha is folded in so tight around herself that it’s a wonder she can breathe. Bruce looks like he wishes he wasn’t. Barton, even though he says he didn’t take a hit, has the air of a man going to his own funeral. And Cap, he’s... quiet.

Tony punches up their current coordinates. They’re nowhere special right now, but Clint seems sure that they’ll be safe where they’re going. But safe to do what? Sit on their asses while the world goes to hell in a vibranium handcart? They need something to do, something to _hit_. A plan. A goddam plan of attack is what they need. But, with that creepy little witch and her blur of a brother in the field, that plan needs to be more than Tony can offer. Tools, yes. Tech, check. Go-faster stripes? He’s all over it. But strategy, that’s where they need Steve. 

Tony heads for the back of the jet, where he knows Steve is sat among the equipment storage racks and straps. He has to dart past Thor, as the demigod strides from one side of the jet to the other, muttering to himself unintelligibly and oblivious to the presence of anyone else. 

The back of the Quinjet is dark, lit only from the fore. It’s enough though to discern a shape in the gloom, though. Steve is sat, head bowed. His legs are spread wide, but his forearms rest along his thighs and his hands are clasped together between his knees. He looks like... well, like he’s praying. Tony knows Steve was raised Catholic, but he’s always seemed more like a man of faith than one of religion. 

“Hey, uh, Cap?” he says softly.

Steve doesn’t react for a second. His eyes adjusting to the gloom, Tony realises Steve’s lips are moving silently. Were they face on Tony might have a shot at reading them, but from the side he can’t decipher what words are being formed. Then Steve straightens, shoulders setting square and spine stiffening into a taut rod. Tony watches him reassemble himself into The Captain. However, when he turns his head to stare at Tony, his eyes are dull, shadow-stained pits. 

“You weren’t there,” he says quietly.

“Umm... pretty sure I was,” Tony replies.

A shudder runs through Steve. He blinks and the fog behind his eyes seems to lift. “Tony?”

“Last time I checked.”

“I didn’t see you there.”

“Apparently not.”

A frown deepens the drawn creases on Steve’s brow. “Was there something you wanted?”

“You could tell me what happened at the shipyard.”

“We took a hit.”

“Uh-huh, got that. But _what_ happened.”

“She showed us... our fears.” Steve’s mouth draws into a thin line. “You wouldn’t understand.”

“Oh, of course,” Tony huffs. “What could I possibly know about personal demons?” 

He means for the words to be self-deprecating, an acknowledgement of shared frailties, but Steve stiffens in response.

“This isn’t about you, Tony,” he says.

The accusation in his voice is unmistakeable. Tony’s jaw clenches. “No, it’s about the team,” he says coldly. “The one we’re all supposed to be a part of, remember?”

“ _I_ remember,” Steve replies.

“Good. Because right now, that’s all it is. A memory. Ultron is getting exactly what he wants. We’re falling apart; he’s got us on the run. We can’t even go home.”

Steve’s eyes drift close. His Adam’s apple bobs as he swallows thickly. 

“No, we can’t.”


	11. Chapter 11

That’s... a lot of logs. 

Steve stares at the small mountain of chopped firewood he’s created, tumbled untidily about the Barton’s front yard. Is there such a thing as too much wood? He rubs the back of his neck. Growing up in Brooklyn doesn’t give you much experience with these things.

“Well, if you ever decide on a career change, lumberjacking might just be your thing.”

Steve spins. “Stark,” he says. 

Tony nudges with his foot at the relatively small island of logs he’d chopped before his departure. “Aw, you finished up without me,” he says. His words are easy, but the tension between them isn’t gone altogether. Too much got said and even more didn’t. It feels like they’ve been on a roundabout non-stop since the night of the party; equal forces trying to pull them together and fly them apart.

“You fix the tractor already?” Steve asks.

Tony shrugs. “Maybe ready to get back on it.” He picks an armful of logs and carries them to the south face of the house, where a patch of grit butts up to the wooden fascia. He drops them and begins assembling them into a criss-cross platform.

“What’re you doing?” Steve asks, folding his arms and tipping his head at what Tony is building.

“You gotta vent the base of your woodpile or it gets damp in it.”

Steve gets no further than forming the word ‘what?’ before Tony stands, wiping his hands on his jeans, and offers him a broad smirk.

“Boy scout, remember?”

Steve surprises himself by laughing. “Tony, sometimes you confound me.”

“Believe it or not, you’re not the first person to tell me that,” Tony replies, his smirk fading to a softer smile. He has a smudge of something by his nose; maybe soil, maybe oil. Steve’s fingers itch with the urge to wipe it away. 

“I’ll, uh, fetch you some more wood,” he says.

“I’m good here,” Tony replies. “And anyway, you’re needed in the barn.”

Steve frowns. “What? What use am I with a tractor? You want me to push it?”

“I wouldn’t recommend it,” Tony says. He seems vaguely pleased by the confusion he’s inspiring. He jerks his thumb in the direction of the barn. “Just go. You’ll see.”

****

“Hello?”

Steve hasn’t caught up entirely on modern cinema, but he has the feeling that entering a dark barn under the ominous instruction ‘you’ll see’ is probably up there with asking ‘what could possibly go wrong’ right before taking a trip to Murder Woods.

And he’s wearing a top that’s just a little too tight. This does not bode well.

He senses movement behind him rather than seeing it. He spins, bracing himself.

Nick Fury is stood, arms folded across his chest, giving Steve a frankly unimpressed look with his good eye.

Steve could just hug him. Well, he couldn’t because that’s not really their relationship, but seeing him elicits the same relieved rush that might precipitate throwing your arms around someone and clinging on for dear life.

“Fury, hot damn is it good to see you,” he says, a lopsided smile breaking over his face.

Nick tilts his chin up, adding an extra layer of austerity to his already cold demeanour.

“Uh, Nick?” Steve says.

“Did I say ‘at ease’, soldier?” Fury barks.

Steve’s body responds to the command in his voice automatically, snapping to attention. “Sir.”

Fury unfolds his arms and takes a step closer. “Hell of a mess, Rogers,” he says.

“Yes, Sir,” Steve replies. “Not the team’s fault.”

“Stark lets a psychopathic AI loose on the world, Banner tears Jo’sberg a new one, Thor trades us in the first sign of trouble, Clint puts all _this_ ,” Fury gestures around the barn, “on the line to pull _your_ ass out of the fire, and you’re saying _none_ of it is their fault?”

Fury’s verbal assault staggers Steve more than any physical attack could. He has to swallow several times to find enough air to reply. “Sir. No sir.”

“Oh, well that’s okay then.” Fury plonks himself down on a crate and looks up at Steve with a crooked eyebrow.

Steve blinks. “Uh... Sir?”

“Cut the military crap, Steve,” Fury says. “You guys fucked up. It’s what people do.”

Very, very slowly, and under Fury’s steady gaze, Steve relaxes out of full attention. 

“Wow, it’s like you’re a whole other man,” Fury remarks dryly. “You sure you don’t want some Asgardian spirit to take the edge off?”

Steve feels a prickle of heat in his checks and the tops of his ears. “How’d you know about..?”

“I might only have one eye on you, but it’s a good one.”

Steve nods slowly. He could hazard a guess at the name of that eye but it serves little purpose to do so. The idea that Nick only has a single informant _anywhere_ isn’t worth wasting its weight in air.

“So...” Nick says. “You wanna give me the lowdown?”

Steve exhales slowly. He leans back against one of the barn’s support struts. “It’s pretty much exactly as you called it. The Maximoff’s got to us, just like Ultron wanted. And instead of coming together, we fell apart.” A small, exasperated growl forces its way up and out of Steve’s throat. “If Stark had just come to me...”

Fury holds up a hand. “Let me tell you a little something about Tony,” he says. “You knew Howard back in the good ol’ days, right?”

“In the _War_ , yeah.”

“Well, I knew him after Tony was born. Guy could be a real hard ass, especially on his kid. Nothing Tony ever did seemed good enough. After a while, I think Tony just gave up trying not to disappoint him.”

Steve is glad for the solid pillar at his back. It’s hard to imagine Howard as anything other than the slick, urbane, slightly crazy pilot and pioneer he knew in the forties. Always quick with a quip or unsolicited advice on women; in Steve’s mind Howard was frozen that way alongside him. Fury’s unvarnished assessment goes a long way to filling in some gaps.

“It took until a couple of years ago for Tony to find out Howard just had a funny way of showing how proud he was of him, way after the old guy died. That changed him, maybe more than the reactor, but it still only made him care about what was dropped directly in his lap.”

“He’s not like that anymore,” Steve says; half asking, half assuring.

“No he is not,” Fury confirms. “And that’s in no small part thanks to you.”

“Me?”

“Whatever your feelings about Stark...”

Something in his tone makes Steve jerk upright, a small startled noise passing his lips.

“ _Whatever_ your feelings,” Fury repeats firmly, “you gotta realise the guy cares about you; all of you. Sure, he goes off half-cocked sometimes, but it’s because he’s found something worth risking being a disappointment for. He wants to save the world.”

“He’s an Avenger,” Steve says, the full meaning of those words hitting him for perhaps the first time.

“Damn straight,” agrees Fury. “And it’s precisely why I built this team. To do what other people can’t always; the right thing. And if you get that wrong, to find a way to _make_ it right.”

“You got any ideas on how we do that?” Steve asks hopefully.

Fury’s face twists in a grim half smile. “Well, first, you and your team need to get some rest. I’ve already asked Mrs. Barton to take the children into town for a few hours so you can all get your heads down. Me, I’ve got a lot of calls to make. Put the fear of Christmas past into a few people.”

Steve nods. “You know what I like about you, Fury? You use references I actually understand.”

Fury barks out a laugh. “Us old guys have to stick together,” he says, clapping his hand to Steve’s back and guiding them from the barn and to the house.

****

“I’m sorry about this,” Laura says, pulling her hair into a tight ponytail, “but the baby’s room is just a stack of boxes yet and Doctor Banner is on the couch, apparently, so...”

“We appreciate all you’ve done, Mrs. Barton,” Steve says, “you’ve been very kind.”

Laura smiles, head ducked. Steve thinks he sees a flash of something knowing in her eyes, but it’s gone too fast to be certain.

Tony nudges into the bedroom doorway. “It’s okay, Mrs. B. We have sleepovers _all_ the time in New York. We do each other’s hair, paint our toenails, tell ghost stories...” Tony wiggles his eyebrows at him. “Steve likes ghost stories, don’t you?”

“Uh... uh-huh,” Steve replies. This doorframe is not exactly an expansive space and Tony is pressed quite tight to him, hand to the small of his back.

Laura’s laugh is light and bouncing, her face crinkling in a way that suggests it’s something she does a lot. “Well, sleep tight,” she says.

“Thank you, Mrs. Barton,” Steve says.

She scrunches her nose delicately. “Please, call me Laura.”

“Honey?” It’s Barton calling from his own bedroom. “Have you seen my sweater?”

Laura sighs fondly. “I better go help him look,” she says.

Steve nods, shooing Tony inside the bedroom and closing the door behind them.

 _“It’s right here!”_ he hears Laura say through the wall.

Steve turns to find Tony bent over the bed, testing the spring of the mattress with his hands. He turns his face to Steve. 

“Might be a bit soft for you,” he says with a smirk.

“Not going to be a problem,” Steve replies, easing past Tony and tugging a pillow off the bed, placing it on the floor next to the nightstand.

Tony snorts. “Oh, please. You’re going to get weird about sharing a bed with me?”

“I’m not being ‘weird’, I’m being practical.”

“Is this some kind of trust issue?” Tony says, folding his arms.

“Tony, I trust you...”

“Yeah, not feeling it.”

“I just don’t think it’s appropriate that you and I...”

“Why.” Tony’s voice is a flat challenge.

Steve tries to meet his stare, but it’s not easy and he slowly lowers his eyes. “You know why,” he says quietly.

Tony is suddenly very close, impossible to avoid. He reaches out to Steve, fingers warm against the skin of Steve’s wrist. “No, I’m not sure I do.”

Steve takes a deep breath, willing his heart to slow, wanting to turn away from the situation. But running and hiding only gets you so far, and part of Steve knows that this is far enough. He shakes away the touch.

“I’m _angry_ with you, Tony,” he answers, keeping his voice low enough for it not to escape the room. 

Tony’s brow flutters between surprise and confusion. A giggle hiccups out of him but he covers it with a cough. “You... you’re angry with me?” Another giggle bursts free.

Steve huffs. “Yes. I’m angry that you went ahead with Ultron without talking to me. I’m angry that you didn’t feel that you _could_ talk to me, that I wasn’t worth consulting over something that big.”

“Steve, I...”

Steve holds up a hand and Tony falls silent. “No, let me say this. Because I _get_ why you did it, and I know this has been as hard for you as it has for the rest of us. But that doesn’t mean I can just stop how I feel.”

“Oh, you know, do you?” Tony growls, low and dangerous. A dark pink flush infuses his cheeks. “I saw you _dead_ , Steve. You, the team, the whole goddamn Earth.”

All the heat seems to flood out of Steve’s body. “The Maximoff girl got to you?”

Tony nods almost imperceptibly. “In Sokovia.” He takes a sharp breath. “So now you know, can we just stop this?” he asks.

Steve barely has enough air in his chest to speak. “Stop what?” he croaks.

A tiny, weary-looking smile tips one corner of Tony’s mouth upwards. “All this fighting without getting to the kiss-and-make-upping part.”

It takes less than a single breath, certainly less than a second thought, for Steve to react; legs carrying him forward. He feels Tony’s gasp as much as hears it, chests tight together. His hands come up to Tony’s face, fingertips easing into brown tousles, and then...

And _then_.

The kiss is hard; uncompromising. Tony’s chin tilts up to urge it onwards and Steve can do nothing but oblige. Everything focuses in on the press of their lips, the myriad fleeting touches of skin to skin, the rumbled little noises of pleasure Tony makes in his throat. It’s far from chaste, but Steve resists letting it deepen. The heat and promise of Tony’s mouth offers more, almost maddeningly so, but this is enough: as sweet as it is fierce and utterly wonderful.

Finally, Steve breaks it, pulling back far enough to focus on Tony’s face. The other man’s cheeks are pink and his lips dusky, his eyes wide, deep pools. The air between them is heavy and damp with mingled exhalations.

“Okay?” Steve whispers.

Tony blinks dizzily for a moment, before a wicked grin creeps onto his face. “That,” he says, running a tongue over his roughened lips, “is probably the most patriotic thing I’ve ever done.”

“Feeling better?”

Tony chuckles. “Better,” he agrees.

Steve smiles crookedly, feeling more than a little self-conscious as Tony’s eyes flicker to his mouth. “Well, good,” he says. “Now get in bed.”

The stuttered laugh that escapes Tony’s throat is precisely the response Steve hoped for. “Excuse me?”

“Sleep. I’m not getting another dressing down from Fury because the two of us don’t come out of this room rested.” Steve casts a meaningful glance at the bed behind then. He waits while Tony toes off his shoes and climbs onto it, permitting himself a flush of pride at the slight unsteadiness in his companion’s gait. Tony wriggles himself up to the pillows, turning onto his side. The position emphasised his form, the angles and lean curves of his body and the glint in his eye says he knows it.

Steve covers his smirk. He moves to the long edge of the bed. Smoothly, he drops to his haunches, then down onto the floor. He lies back, stretching out, head to the pillow he placed there.

The mattress beside him wobbles, the springs creaking slightly. Then Tony’s face appears over the edge.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” he asks.

“Going to sleep?”

“And you think that after what just happened I’m going to let you do that on the floor?”

Steve can’t hold back his laughter. “You’ll _let_ me?”

Tony’s eyebrows twitch upwards. “Get your ass on this bed, soldier,” he says.

Even if this was some crazy world where Tony did outrank him, Steve is pretty sure that particular order would struggle to stand up in an insubordination tribunal. And yet...

“You won’t shut up until I come up there, will you?” he asks. He sighs and lifts himself slightly on his elbows.

Tony’s face disappears, the bed wobbling as he rolls away from the edge. “Maybe not even then,” Steve hears him say.

Steve rolls his eyes, easing himself from the floor and up onto the bed. He sticks to the edge however, his back turned to Tony; not because he has any anger left in him, but because that’s as much as he dares. “Now go to sleep,” he instructs.

He listens as Tony huffs, followed by the distinct dip and sway of springs as a not-insignificant mass slides across it. Tony presses up against Steve’s spine, head sharing his pillow. He can feel Tony’s breath tickle the skin on his neck and behind his ear, the tuck of his chin against his shoulder. “What are you doing?” he asks, despite the blatancy of the answer.

“I like to be big spoon,” Tony replies.

“ _Big spoon_?”

“Uh huh. Now shush. We’re supposed to be going to sleep.”

Steve closes his eyes. It’s less repetitive than rolling them again. In the dark behind his eyelids, the other sensations of their position are intensified: the sound of Tony breathing; the smell of laundry powder and warm skin; the long line of their joined bodies touching. It’s all so strange, but marvellous. He feels himself begin to drift.

“So what did Fury say to you?”

Steve draws himself back from the drowsy boundaries of sleep. “Huh?”

“You said he gave you a telling off.”

“Uh, yeah...”

Tony’s voice is barely audible. “Because of me?”

Steve breathes deliberately slowly. “Because of me.”

“He made me cry,” Tony replies, in a little boy voice designed to make sure it is unbelievable.

“He’s done that to me before,” Steve replies.

He feels Tony’s nose nuzzle the short hairs at the nape of his neck. “Really?”

“No.”

“No,” Tony echoes sorely.

Silence falls again. Steve shifts his weight a little, drawing back from the edge of the bed and giving in, just slightly, to the comforting cradle of Tony’s body. 

“You know, I didn’t mean for this to happen,” Tony whispers once Steve stills.

“You’ve been a perfect gentleman,” Steve sighs.

“No,” Tony says, “I mean with Ultron.”

“Tony...”

“He’s kinda... my kid, I guess.” Tony’s voice sounds strange, close yet terribly far away. “And you have to wonder, if your kid’s a monster, what does that make you?”

Steve swallows. Time and again, Tony’s brilliant mind has proven itself able to leap beyond anything Steve can conjure. But he’s wrong in this: if Ultron a child, he’s not Tony’s alone. They have all had a hand in his making; even if Stark is the name etched on his servos. The ghosts of a long-gone past and echoes in an empty room: these were Steve’s contribution.

“You know,” Tony drawls, “that’s where you’re supposed to reassure me.”

Steve reaches behind himself, searching. He finds his target and draws Tony’s arm over him, guiding the other man’s hand under the fabric of his t-shirt and pressing it to the bare flesh of his stomach. The heat of Tony’s palm, the roughness of his skin, sends a slight shiver of rightness through Steve. Disjointedly, he realises he placed Tony’s hand over the exact spot where the fractured slug had burst through his skin. The scar has long since faded, but he _knows_.

“I’ll fix this,” Tony whispers. 

Steve holds himself on the fringes of sleep for a while, waiting to see if Tony speaks again. However, after a few minutes the other man’s breathing begins to slow and deepen, at last turning to quiet snores. Steve closes his eyes and the world closes down just to that noise, the feel of Tony’s chest rise and fall against his back, the heaviness of the arm that holds him.

And there’s no need to fight any more.

****

_Steve switches the bunch of flowers and box of chocolates he’s carrying under his left arm and knocks on the red-painted door. He shuffles slightly as he waits. Suddenly, the door flings open, and it’s Peggy on the other side of it. Her dark hair is pulled back in a messy bun, a pinafore tied around her narrow waist, and flour is streaked beside her nose._

_“Steve!” she gasps. “I didn’t know you were in England!”_

_Steve smiles shyly. “Well, it wouldn’t have been a surprise if you did.”_

_She pulls him into a hug, trying to keep her floury hands from his leather jacket. She pulls back, casting a very slightly nervous look down the street. A woman physically greeting a strange man on her doorstep is not something that even these liberal times will permit. This is Peggy’s home, Peggy’s life; she will have to face the sewing-circle gossip long after he leaves for the states again. He clears his throat._

_“Oh, where are my manners! Come in.” Peggy stands aside, letting Steve move inside the house. A short hall leads straight into a well appointed kitchen, a ball of half-kneaded dough on the white-dusted counter. He hears her close the front door and holds out the gifts to her as she joins him._

_“These are for you,” he says._

_Peggy smiles as she accepts them. “Oh, they’re beautiful, Steve, thank you. And the boys will **love** the chocolate.”_

_She moves about the kitchen with an easy grace, washing off her hands; throwing a damp tea towel over the dough; finding a vase for the flowers; placing the kettle on the gas-powered hob. She removes her pinny and Steve realises she’s wearing a khaki trouser suit beneath it. For some reason, he’d thought it was a dress. She sets a tray with a teapot and china, flower-patterned cups, and then ushers them into a bright and cheerful parlour that looks out over the rear yard. There are toys strewn about it: a wooden rocking horse, tiny plastic soldiers, a scale model of a helicarrier. But they all look pristine; untouched. The house is still._

_Peggy puts the tray down on the chintzy table cloth and begins to pour. Steve takes a seat at the small table. She passes him his cup, their fingers brushing. Warmth spreads through him, as it always has at Peggy’s touch. The fire is old now, but the embers still burn. She smiles, a knowing, woman’s smile, and busies herself pouring her own tea. Once they are both provided for, she sits down on a floral, wing-backed chair._

_“So, is your husband...”_

_Peggy’s smile is a little tighter than before. “Away on a mission,” she says. “You know how it is.”_

_He knows, alright. There’s always another mission, another task for God and country, another way you might die, cold and alone, miles from everyone you ever knew and loved._

_It’s why he got out when he did, before he grew to resent the demands of his superiors, the never-ending needs of a world he had already lost so much to protect._

_Maybe he should have gotten out just a little earlier._

_“It must be hard,” he says, taking a sip of his tea._

_Peggy shrugs nonchalantly, but Steve knows it’s just bravura. “It’s worse for the boys,” she admits. “Sometimes I talk about their father and you can see it in their eyes; they’re struggling to picture him.” Her gaze drops to her teacup._

_Steve reaches out to take Peggy’s hand. “And you?” he asks softly._

_Peggy sniffs and lifts her eyes, squeezing his hand in return. “I forget sometimes... what it feels like.”_

_Steve startles at Peggy’s words, and she looks at him puzzled before a grin pulls her lips apart to reveal perfect white teeth. She chuckles. “Oh, not **that**!” she says. “Two children are quite enough for me. I mean... being out there. In that world. I don’t think either of us imagined our lives quite like this.”_

_“No, I don’t suppose we did,” Steve says. “But these were our choices.”_

_Peggy is silent for just a second too long. “I do love my husband,” she says quietly. “And I wouldn’t trade the boys for the world.” She takes a delicate sip of her glass of water. “But that doesn’t mean I don’t wonder how things could have been different. Are you saying you don’t?”_

_“No,” says Steve, and it comes out more forcefully than he entirely means. “I did my duty, but I knew what that life was doing to me. I’m not sure I’d’ve liked the man I would have become if I hadn’t walked away.”_

_“Steve, you could never be anything less than a good man,” Peggy says. “It just isn’t in you. That’s what Erskine saw when he picked you. It’s what I saw when...” She cuts herself off._

_They both know the danger of this line of thought. They’ve been down it... one more time than they should’ve. But she’s another man’s wife, a man who is still out there being a hero. And he’s just Steve Rogers from Brooklyn, owner of a small construction company and Yankees fan._

_Peggy clears her throat, returning her tone to the conversational. “So, is there anyone special back home?” she asks._

_Steve shakes his head. “You know me, too busy for all that,” he excuses._

_“I’m sure.” Peggy’s lips twitch, but she holds back whatever she was intending to say. “How is business?”_

_“No shortage of vets looking to build themselves new lives.”_

_His company mainly employs former soldiers; guys scooped out of their lives at eighteen and dumped in the theatre of war with little more than basic training, then expected to pick up where they left off when Uncle Sam no longer needed them. A few did, but many needed more help than the paltry hand-outs they received. More still didn’t **want** handouts, they wanted to help themselves. Steve took his sizeable government severance and set about making a company that could do just that. Or at least, that’s what he’s trying. The last few years have been tight and he’s had to scramble to make ends meet._

_“You mentioned in your last letter about bringing in a partner?” Peggy says._

_“Yeah,” he says, deliberately keeping his voice level. “Some guy with deeper pockets than mine.”_

_Peggy gives him a hard look. “Steven Rogers, I will not believe that you would allow just ‘some guy’ a share in your business.”_

_Steve opens his mouth to retort, but closes it under Peggy’s stern scrutiny. He sighs. “I made a mess of things, Peg,” he admits. “I wanted to help build something that mattered, something to be proud of. But all the good wishes in the world don’t pay wages, they don’t buy materials. Hell, they can’t even keep the lights on. Tony...”_

_“So his name’s Tony,” Peggy says._

_A smile tugs at Steve’s cheek. “Yes,” he says. “We met... under strange circumstances. I thought he was a show off, he thought I was a stick-in-the-mud...”_

_“Well, you obviously both got over it.”_

_“Most of the time,” Steve says. “Sometimes he can still be a complete jackass. But he wants what I want.”_

_“And what do you want?” Peggy asks. Her voice is level, measured, and her eyes hold his in a way that sends the back of his neck prickling with heat._

_“Same as I always have. To do the right thing, whatever the cost.”_

_Peggy’s mouth flutters, her nostrils flaring delicately. Then she gives up all pretence and laughs. “Oh Steve, you always are so _dramatic_.”_

_“What?” Steve’s brow draws down in a deep frown._

_“You’re not the first person in history to fall for someone, you know.”_

_Steve splutters. “I... what...”_

_Peggy settles back in her dining chair, arms folded across her chest. “How long have we known each other?” she asks._

_“I don’t...”_

_“It’s a little over fifteen years,” she answers for him. “And I’d like to think that even though I’m not in the Intelligence business any more, I’m still capable of **using** a little of it.”_

_“Peggy...”_

_She holds up a finely-boned hand to silence him. “You’ve changed so much since we met, but the one thing that the serum never touched was your heart. I always knew you had the greatest capacity for love of anyone I’ve ever met.” She waves off his protest before continuing. “So I never doubted you loved me,” she says. “Just like I never questioned that you loved your friend Bucky.”_

_“I... Bucky and I weren’t... we never...” Steve squeezes his lips tight together._

_“That doesn’t mean you didn’t love him.”_

_Steve swallows, the tightness in his throat threatening to take his breath. He had loved Bucky: he can’t deny that and she knows it. It would be a betrayal of the man and his memory to pretend that the bond they shared wasn’t deeper than simple friendship. “I did,” he says quietly. “I always will.”_

_She smiles slightly. “You see beyond what other people see,” she says. “You looked in the mirror and saw a soldier where they saw only a weakling. When you spoke to me, it was always as an equal. That you would be able to look past the world’s prejudice and see the beauty of a person for **who** they are, rather than **what**...”_

_Her eyes are full of such understanding and compassion that he can barely hold her gaze. “You never have to lie to me, Steve,” she says quietly._

_Steve takes a deep breath, fingers fluttering against the bare wooden table. He exhales slowly, willing his heart to follow suit. “It’s... early days,” he says. “It’s not so easy as taking your gal out to the dancehall when you’re both...” He allows the words to trail off._

_Peggy smiles softly, leaning forward to place her hand over his and stilling the nervous motion. “But you have feelings for him?” she says._

_Steve allows himself a small nod. “Yeah, I do,” he says. “He’s smart, so good with numbers. And he’s funny, at least when he’s not trying too hard. He likes to act like he doesn’t give two hoots, but he cares so much that I worry for him sometimes.”_

_“Well, I know how that is,” Peggy lilts. “So... is he handsome?”_

_The bluntness of the question startles a laugh out of Steve, a crooked smile slowly unfurling on his face. “Actually, he is,” he concedes._

_“Well, good,” Peggy says matter-of-factly, sitting back once more. “Not that it’s the bee-all and end-all, but it doesn’t hurt.”_

_“It does not,” Steve agrees. He takes a sip of his cooled coffee, placing the plain, white mug back down. “Thank you, Peggy,” he says._

_She shakes her head slightly, almost sadly. Her chin-length curls bounce and bob. “One day, people will realise we didn’t fight for flags, or even just to put a stop to the madness of the Reich. We fought for freedom, for the future.”_

_“It’s the American dream,” Steve says dryly._

_Peggy sighs. “Some dreams you let go. Others are worth holding on to.”_


	12. Chapter 12

It’s kind of strange waking up with someone when you’ve gotten used to being alone: slowly becoming aware of the motions of your chest but hearing breaths that don’t quite fall to the same rhythm. The heartbeat in your throat is your own, but somehow you know it’s not the only one. Your hazy sense of your place in space merges with the warm air between your bodies, bridging the gap, drawing you closer. 

It’s also that moment of fear that you might have drooled on the pillow or, worse, on the person you are waking up beside.

Tony whines quietly, wriggling as the last, loose vestiges of sleep slip away. He blinks his eyes open. Steve is laid barely a hand span from him, almost too close for Tony to focus on. He must have turned at some point so they are face to face, lying on a single pillow. Their bodies curve apart, gracing each other with a small measure of personal space. But it’s not much. Anyone hazarding across them would be inclined to tell them to get a room. Only technically they already have, so any interlopers have probably ceded the right to get uppity.

Throughout Tony’s mental meanderings (and the hasty check of his chin for dribble), Steve has remained asleep. His expression is peaceful, nose flaring slightly with his slow, deep breaths; utterly relaxed. Seeing anyone like that is a boon, but to be allowed so close to Steve in this state of vulnerability is a greater privilege than almost any Tony has ever felt. In this state, the strong set of Steve’s bones, from the angle of his jaw to his aquiline nose, take on a strangely graceful cast. It feels like a final, invisible mask has been cast aside, one that Tony never even realised was there. It’s a sense of something deeper than the uniform, more than the burden of command, being shed. This is him at his most basic, most pure.

Tony reaches up to brush away a single lost lash that lies on the curve of Steve’s cheek but his fingers falter just above pale skin, not wanting to disturb his companion. That desire, however, wars with another: the need to touch, to feel the strength and tenderness of this man. For all the things they have been to each other over the last few years, and for all the things they might yet be, Steve is the most _human_ person Tony has ever known. And here they are, sharing a bed. The pink flush of Steve’s lips, parted ever so slightly, serves to remind Tony of the fierceness of the kiss. His own lips tingle with echoed sensation.

The frail indecision he feels breaks, and Tony runs his thumb over Steve’s cheekbone, sweeping away the lash. A sudden frown crosses Steve’s brow. It’s more than just be woken; a flash of disquiet, perhaps even pain. Tony’s chest aches for it, and his hand moves up into Steve’s hair without thought; stroking, soothing. The tension resolves and Steve’s lips move silently. It looks like he’s saying ‘thank you’, but the words are not formed enough for Tony to be sure. At last his eyes flutter open. Tony watches the play of emotions there: first confusion, a blossom of recognition, hesitant remembrance and finally a timid smile of pleasure.

“Hey,” Steve greets quietly.

“Hey, Cap,” Tony replies, in exactly the same way he always would have had they passed in a hall or met in the kitchen back home.

Slowly, tentatively, Steve reaches out and places his hand on the bump of Tony’s hip. It’s a strangely possessive gesture, and that thought sends giddy waves through Tony. Steve’s smile becomes a little less uncertain and Tony feels an inextricable pull, a need that has only one solution.

And so they’re kissing again, which has absolutely nothing to do with Tony balling his fist into the stretchy fabric of Steve’s t-shirt and pulling him into it. And this is different, because - and this is going to sound a little weird, but stay with him - Tony is pretty sure that last time he kissed Captain America. And that’s pretty swell. Who wouldn’t want that? But now, he’s kissing Steve Rogers and that’s... something else. This time, when Tony parts his lips, Steve follows. Every sense fills with it until Tony can only breathe in short gasps. They half roll, legs tangling so that Steve’s thigh is caught between his, a portion of Steve’s weight pressing them together. Tony slides his hand down Steve’s side, feeling the play of muscle and bone and the radiant warmth of Steve’s skin; the smoothness of synthetic fabric and then the coarser cotton of his trousers. And now, because he’s pretty much there anyway, he curves his hand around to the swell of Steve’s buttock and gives it a little squeeze.

Steve’s hips stutter forward in an uncontrolled spasm, and Tony arches into it helplessly; honestly. There’s no denying the way they respond, the increased urgency of their touches.

It’s not enough. Which is to say, it’s absolutely too much. Because while Tony’s not totally au fait with the social mores of how to behave when a work colleague invites you to stay with the family you didn’t know they had, he’s pretty sure _this_ is teetering towards the inappropriate. He pulls away, darting back to press his lips to the edge of Steve’s jaw at the muffled huff escaping the other man, then drawing back once more.

“I’m not even wearing my own boxer shorts,” he explains, voice teetering towards the unappealingly whiney.

Steve groans quietly but nods and flops onto his back, staring up at the ceiling. Tony knows exactly how he feels. Steve lifts his forearm up to his brow, wiping away the thin sheen of perspiration on it, then letting his arm drop back over his head and onto the pillows. The stretch pulls up his t-shirt, a strip of skin flashing between its hem and the top of his pants.

Tony takes a deep breath, staring at the pale flesh and its dusting of freckles and fine hairs. “You are _so_ hot,” he says on the shaky exhalation.

Steve turns his head to the side. His blue eyes hold equal measures of amusement and bashfulness. “It’s the serum,” he says. “Increased metabolism.” The pink glow in his cheeks suggests he knows that’s not what Tony meant.

Tony shuffles, drawing close enough to rest his head on Steve’s shoulder. “So where did a good boy like you learn to kiss like that?” he asks.

“Nazi Germany,” Steve answers assuredly.

“Weren’t you meant to be fighting axis powers?”

Steve shrugs. “There were slow days.”

As ridiculous as it is, the thought makes Tony’s insides flutter slightly. He’s pretty sure that Steve is joking, or at least making light. Because whatever clandestine romances Steve may or may not have experienced in the bloodied fields of 1940s Europe, they’re none of Tony’s business. And it’s not like he’s normally one for being jealous, or needy... 

No, wait, he’s _absolutely_ one for being needy. 

“So, was it one of your squad?” he asks. It is supposed to come out flippant, but falls a little short.

“Wh... what?” Steve says, on the verge of perplexed laughter.

“That kid you grew up with? B word. Bill? Beverly?”

All of the mirth melts from Steve’s face, a deep line forming on his brow. “God, No,” he says. He reaches down between them and takes Tony’s hand, fingers linking and palms pressing firmly together. “No,” he repeats more quietly. “Honestly, Tony, it’s not like I’ve had tons of... practice. Maybe you just bring out the best in me.”

Pride warms the skittering sensation in Tony’s stomach. “Or the worst,” he suggests.

Steve does huff out a laugh now. “Maybe a bit of that, too.”

Tony snorts. “You’re really bad at this ‘reassuring’ thing.”

“You’ve got plenty of people to tell you what you _want_ to hear,” Steve chides gently.

“Yeah, people I _pay_ ,” Tony agrees. “My friends treat me like I’m an asshole.”

Steve looks at him very, very meaningfully.

“Shut up,” Tony says, nudging Steve’s shoulder with his nose.

They fall silent. Lying still isn’t something Tony is normally very good at, but this is... nice. The orange light of a setting sun peeks into the room. It sends a long streak up the bed at a jaunty angle, wrapping over Tony’s legs, crossing to Steve at the level of their stomachs and up his chest. It dips and sways with their angles and curves and ripples rhythmically in time to Steve’s breaths. The air is warm and beguiling, making Tony feel like if they just stay like this, everything outside the door might just hold for a while longer. 

Their hands are still linked, turning a little damp where the skin presses tight. Tony lifts the joined knot of their fingers so that he can study it. It looks... well, it looks strange. He’s not really a hand-holdy kind of guy, but on the occasions he has, it’s always been with a partner who is decidedly more petite than himself. Steve certainly doesn’t meet that description. His hand is of a similar size, if not a little larger, than Tony’s. The lack of discrepancy means that neither one dominates to the other; offering strength and support without demanding submission. He relaxes his arm, tucking the back of Steve’s palm against his stomach once more.

He wonders, because _of course_ he wonders, how it will work between them. Tony’s had enough ‘practice’ to know these things generally _do_ if you both want them to (although not always: here’s looking at you Miss Miranda Miskatov of Pensacola.) But that’s... kind of the point. Tony’s entire bank of experience is based on being with women. Not that he needs a diagram drawing or anything, but this is kind of unexplored physical and psychological territory. Like, would he want... 

His breath hitches.

Okay, so file that under maybe (aka definitely) yes. What about...

He has to stifle a whimper.

From the edges of his peripheral vision, Tony realises that Steve is looking down at him, an amused yet vaguely perplexed expression twitching his nose and eyebrows. He also becomes aware that he’s absently taken to running a finger over the bumps and dips of Steve’s chest, tracing the lines and circles there.

“Penny for your thoughts?” Steve says.

Tony snorts. “My thoughts cost folding money, old man.”

A sudden rap at the door makes them both jump. Steve rolls inwards, arm coming over Tony in a loose embrace. Tony’s hand flattens against Steve’s breastbone, over his heart. It’s as though their innate reaction is to protect each other, and preserve this moment of peace just a little longer.

But that wouldn’t be their world. Tony hears a delicate cough from the other side of the wood, knows through familiarity that it’s Romanoff. “You boys decent in there?” she calls.

Tony’s eyes flicker over Steve’s face; the muss of his hair; the rough flush of his lips. And then there’s Steve’s hand, which has slipped from the small of his back to rest on his ass...

“Umm...” he replies.

“Good job, Tony,” Steve whispers.

Tony drops his head to the hollow below Steve’s neck and chuckles quietly.

“Oooh-kay,” Natasha calls. There’s a definite sound of shuffling. “Well, dinner’s nearly on the table so maybe... wash up before coming down?”

Tony presses closer as the laughter threatens to spill out of their embrace. He listens for the tell-tale creak of floorboards to indicate Tasha has moved off. Apparently, Steve is doing the same because as the faint noises fade, he takes a playful swat at Tony’s backside. Tony doesn’t quite yelp, but the noise he makes isn’t exactly flattering either.

Steve quirks his eyebrow at him. “You know, she’s probably downstairs right now gossiping with Barton.”

“You slap my ass again and she’s going to have a whole lot more to say.” He narrows his eyes, almost daring Steve to do it, manners be damned.

For a second, the look of mischief on Steve’s face makes Tony think his bluff is about to get called. Damn it, they do say it’s always the quiet ones. And it would appear that Captain Rogers has been keeping _plenty_ quiet. At last, however, Steve’s expression breaks into a chagrined little smile and they move apart. Steve climbs to his feet and runs his fingers through his dark blond hair, straightening and smoothing. Tony shuffles to the foot of the bed, recovering his shoes. He comes to stand in front of Steve, eyes lifted to the taller man’s face. Steve frowns at him slightly and reaches out, tidying the collar of Tony’s borrowed shirt. His fingers falter as he finishes and he lifts his right hand to Tony’s cheek, cupping it and running his blunt thumb over Tony’s lower lip. The look of wonder on his face is dizzying, and Tony knows from how intensely he feels the slight touch that his mouth must still bear the lingering evidence of their kisses. Steve dips his head, replacing his thumb with his lips, a brief sweet press that holds as much in promise as it does tenderness.

“So, we’re really going to do this?” Tony asks as they part.

“You mean, date?”

Tony shrugs. “Or be in an actual, adult relationship. Whatever.”

A thoughtful frown crosses Steve’s brow. “I’d like that,” he says slowly.

Tony feels the relief ease through him like a wave. “And what about the team?” he asks.

“Maybe it could just be you and me for now.”

The way Steve says it, so deadpan, Tony thinks he’s misunderstood for a moment. Then he catches the glint in Steve’s eye and he snorts with laughter. “You, Mr Rogers, have a very dirty mind.”

Steve smirks back. “Well, thank fondue for that.” He laughs, a little self-deprecating twist in his mirth. Tony has no idea what he’s talking about, but he senses it is an intimate joke, one that he should feel privileged to be let in on.

“I think,” Steve says, mouth still twisted in a smile, “that the team has enough to focus on without getting any more distracted by their COs’ sex lives than they already are.”

Tony is almost (almost) preoccupied enough by Steve saying the word ‘sex’ to miss the subtle, secondary inference. But he doesn’t, and his chest swells with it. He exhales the tightness away slowly. “Okay, agreed,” he says. “But put a pin in your diary. Day after we’re done with all this, we’re going up to my suite and not coming out until they’re right.”

Steve’s cheeks pink prettily, but he bows in agreement.

And then the time’s come, what needs to be said has been said and what needs to be done... will have to get in line. Tony gestures to the door. “Age before beauty,” he says.

Steve pulls at the hem of his t-shirt one last time, shoulders squaring. Tony sees the mask descend, the suit Steve wears under the suit. He waits for Steve to make it through the doorway before pressing close behind him and pinching his ass.

Steve jumps and half-spins, lips pouting and eyes narrowing. “Mr. Stark,” he scolds.

Tony lets a broad, toothsome smirk spread over his face. “Save it for the troops,” he replies.

****

They find the others waiting for them in the kitchen. Nat, Bruce and Clint are gathered round the table, beers in hand. Laura is draining pans at the sink and Fury lurks in the far corner of the kitchen, murmuring quietly into his phone. Steve stops just inside the room, eyes taking in the lay of the land.

“Sleep well, Cap?” Natasha drawls.

Steve’s face doesn’t change. So many times, Tony has assumed that the vague innuendoes they banter around just went over his head. But now he knows better, and he gains a further appreciation of Cap’s self-restraint.

“Very well, thank you, Natasha,” Steve replies.

Tony covers his smirk and moves past him, fingers brushing Steve’s waist as he goes. It’s meant looks like nothing, just a gentle nudge to move him to one side. And it works, mostly. Except now the teasing warmth of Steve’s skin means that Tony is having to run non-Euclidian maths in his head to maintain an even blood pressure.

Well, when subtlety fails, shoot off your mouth. “Well I slept _fantastically_ ,” he says with an exaggerated yawn. “Steve snuggles almost as well as you, Banner.”

“Look,” Bruce says, holding up two large hands peaceably, “if you’re going to keep bringing that up, then I really think I should...”

Tony smirks. “Don’t sweat it, big guy. Our love needs no justification.”

Bruce splutters, and Romanoff turns an extremely raised eyebrow in his direction. 

Laura Barton (Tony is still getting used to that) places a large casserole dish down on the table. She scrunches her nose at Clint. “Are they always like this?” she asks.

Before he can answer, Fury looks up from his phone call. “Yes they are,” he says flatly, immediately turning back to business.

Laura chuckles. “Well, dinner’s served. Kids!” She raises her voice for the last. 

Tony hears the pitter-patter of Tiny Bartons come blasting in from the back room. He takes the seat next to Bruce on the far side of the table, jostling the scientist playfully with his shoulder. Bruce turns weary but not humourless eyes on him. Steve takes the seat opposite, leaving space either side. The youngest Barton rushes in to occupy one of the gaps, big wonder-filled eyes looking between Steve to her right and Natasha to her left. Tony knows a case of hero-worship when he sees it, and the kid’s got it bad. He senses shuffling motion at his side, and realises that the other Barton Jr has quietly taken a place next to him. He’s not staring so overtly as the girl, more side-long glances. Tony clears his throat and shifts nervously. 

“Pass me one of those,” he says to Bruce, nodding at the beers by Clint’s right hand at the head of the table.

Bruce leans to do as bid, then straightens and turns back to Tony. “What’s the magic word?” he says.

Tony chokes a little. “Excuse me?”

A very faint smile tugs at Bruce’s lips. “Almost,” he says patiently. He looks at the Barton girl. “Lila, do you know what the magic word is?”

The girl, Lila, (oh, God, Tony is going to have to start remembering the names of co-worker’s spouses and children, isn’t he?) nods seriously at them. “Yes, Sir,” she says. “It’s ‘please’.”

Bruce lifts an eyebrow at Tony.

Tony stifles a sigh. “Would you pass me one of those beverages _please_ , Doctor Banner,” he says.

“Of course, Tony,” Bruce replies. He plucks up a beer and offers it to Tony, leaving Tony no recourse but to take it from him.

He narrows his eyes very slightly. “Thank you, Bruce,” he lilts.

“You’re quite welcome.”

It’s official. Bruce is a dick. Tony wonders if it’s okay to still use the term ‘BFFs’ in your forties.

Clint slides a beer down the table to Steve.

“Don’t do that. You’ll mark the wood.” Laura scolds as she returns with yet another dish, this time filled with mashed potatoes. “Were you raised in a barn?”

“The circus,” Clint replies.

Laura levels a serving spoon on him. “No sass at the dinner table.”

Yes, ma’am,” Clint replies.

Tony watches Laura mentally tally the plates and bowls on the table and then smile in satisfaction.

“Nick,” she calls back to the kitchen, “we’re just waiting for you.”

“Yep. Oh-eight-thirty,” Nick says. “Gotta go.” He hangs up without further discussion and joins them, taking the empty chair at the foot of the table.

Laura takes the final place next to Bruce, and Clint at the head of the table. She reaches out and lays her hand over Clint’s, squeezing. Clint smiles bashfully but turns over his hand and links their fingers together.

Tony sees Steve’s eyes drop to the table in front of him. The very barest of pink flushes creeps across his cheeks, but a tiny smile also graces his lips. The possibility that Tony put that smile there... 

He swallows and widens his gaze to the rest of the table. Hot, home-cooked food; people he cares about; family; all in this picture-postcard farmhouse in Middle America. Tony is not so sappy as to call it a perfect moment, but it’s pretty damn close.

“Well, get stuck in,” Laura says.

They do.

****

It’s almost unbelievable that less than twenty-four hours ago they were all making jokes around a corn-state dinner table. Tony looks at the shattered glass strewn over the floor of the main research lab, the busted-up displays and the now-empty cradle.

This is the very opposite of a perfect moment.

He gathers his gear quickly, shoes crunching as he moves about the lab. With a sigh, he turns his back on it and heads for the deck. 

Steve is there already, packing crates into the jet. Because where else would he be? The perfect soldier: forever ready, never without a plan. Against that, Tony will always come up short.

“Cap,” he says, stopping a few paces away.

Steve turns, the faraway look in his blue eyes fading to recognition. “Tony...” he says softly.

Tony shakes his head. “No, don’t.” He sighs. “It’s not like this is the shortest relationship I’ve ever had.”

Steve’s lips twitch with unspoken words. He takes a deep breath. “Tony, just because we had a disagreement...”

“A _disagreement_?” Tony scoffs. “Steve, I took a shot at you.”

“Yes, you did,” Steve agrees calmly. 

“Well that’s usually a deal-breaker.”

Steve’s brow folds in on itself. “You fired at me _after_ I hurled my shield at you. After I brought the Maximoff’s into your house. _Knowing_ what they’d done to you, to all of us...” He takes a step closer, dropping the volume of his voice, “I just marched them in through the front door. Might as well have taken Toro to a powder factory.”

“You saw an opportunity...”

“And how’s that different to what you did?” Steve says sharply. “Damn it, Tony. There’s enough blame here to go around. You think I don’t know how much power your repulsor tech generates? I’ve seen you level trees. I’ve seen you knock down _Thor_. If you’d meant to hurt me, you could’ve.”

Tony grumbles deep in his throat. “That doesn’t make it right,” he says.

Steve moves closer again, so there’s less than a full step between them. “Maybe not,” he says. “But we’re fighters. Sometimes we forget there’s another way.” He reaches out, hand cupping Tony’s jaw and his thumb running gently over the bruised skin on his cheek. “We get to be heroes. That doesn’t make us perfect.”

Tony manages a small, stuttered grin. “Actually,” he says, leaning in to Steve’s touch, “according to Fury’s files it makes us unbalanced, isolated, narcissistic... well, that last one’s mainly me...”

He has to stop talking then, because Steve is kissing him. Yeah, they’re right in the middle of Avengers Tower, and _yeah_ Tony is still feeling a bit of a jerk, but that’s kind of okay. Because he can feel how the larger man is leaning against him, and he can bear that weight. No. He _wants_ it. 

He sighs as the kiss ends. Steve’s arms are looped loosely around his neck and his encircle Steve’s waist, resting on his hips. “I’d do it again,” he whispers.

Steve’s cheek ticks up in a lopsided smile. “I’d hope so,” he says.

Tony could give himself up to that smile, let it slide. But then he’d have to be someone else, and considering the person he is gets to _do_ what he just did, it’s a trade he’s not ready to make. “You know what I mean,” he says.

Tony feels the rise and fall of Steve’s chest. “I know,” Steve replies softly. “And so would I.”

The polite cough at Tony’s side could only belong to one person. “Well, this isn’t _entirely_ horrible,” Bruce says. “I suppose.”

Tony turns his head to see Bruce and - oh, the joys - _Thor_ as well. “I, uh, Bruce, pal...” Tony begins.

Steve scrambles for words that are hopefully going to be less monosyllabic. “Thor, we, uh, were just...”

So much for that.

Thor folds his arms across his impossibly broad chest. “Is it customary for the warriors of Midgard to celebrate _before_ the battle is won?”

Bruce raises his eyebrow. “Maybe they’re going for the ‘make love not war’ angle?”

Thor chuckles mightily. “Ah, indeed. Such things are known to me,” he says. “In fact, in my youth...”

“I’m just going to stop you there, buddy,” Tony says, finally gathering enough coherence to put together an actual sentence. “This is awkward enough without some tale of youthful exuberance and sexual experimentation between you and what I can only presume was a squire.”

Thor nods his (oh, thank God) assent. “Indeed, perhaps another time.”

“Or never?” Tony suggests. 

Steve nudges him firmly in the side. “We _should_ probably focus on the job in hand,” he reminds. 

“You should. There is something I must take care of before we leave,” Thor states. He strides purposefully away.

Once he is out of earshot, Bruce snorts. “Asgardian bladders are about half the size of human ones. Makes room for extra... muscle.”

Tony mouths the word ‘ah’. “You’d think they’d make their outfits with less buckles, then, wouldn’t you?”

“Yeah,” Bruce agrees. “Now - and don’t think I’m not just brimming over with enthusiasm for the pair of you - but someone very special to me is currently being held by a mass-murdering robot that I helped create. I’d like to know how you plan on taking the bastard down.”

Tony plucks nervously at the hem of his t-shirt and looks to Steve.

With a sigh, Steve lowers himself heavily onto a supply crate. “I’m open to suggestions,” he says.


	13. Chapter 13

The ground drops away. Steve launches himself at the raft, grunting as he bodily hits the cold metal ramp. His fingers dig for traction, and he manages to halt his slide, twisting to stare over the dizzying edge. The remains of Sokovia are plummeting away; ruined, broken buildings jutting up like bleached bones in the pale, high-altitude sunlight.

There is a ‘pfzt’ in his ear, the sound of a private channel being activated over the general comms. “Cap, are you clear?” It’s Tony, his voice strained and raw-edged. Steve can barely hear him over the roaring; the sound of him falling. “Are the civilians clear?”

“Yes, both counts,” Steve replies. The city has reached the clouds now, being swallowed by them. Steve feels a lurch in his stomach. It’s a sensation beyond anxiety, or even guilt. It is pure terror.

“Good,” Tony says. Steve hears him cough. “Both counts.” Another bout of coughing stops him from speaking.

“Tony, are you okay?”

“I’m super-heating the vibranium, generates a lot of ozone. Only so much the suit’s scrubbers can do...”

“How long until...”

“I can do it,” Tony grunts.

“You don’t have to die in the process.” The jagged words hurt Steve’s throat. “Please.”

Steve hears him make a pained grunt. “You’re the one who said...” Again a cough stops him briefly. “...sometimes there isn't a way out.” 

“Sometimes I talk a load of crap,” Steve says, voice brittle and desperate.

He hears Tony chuckle. “If I make it out of this, you and I...” He gasps. “You and I are going to have a chat about your potty-mouth.”

The comms cut. For a second, the world is silent; there is no sound from the raft’s engines, or the wail of wind, or the cries of Steve’s fellow, frightened passengers. Even Steve’s heart seems to have stopped.

Then the silence is torn away. A huge rumble sounds from far below, and a second later the raft sways violently as a concussive force hits it. People scream: both profanities and prayers. Steve cannot understand the words, but he shares in their sentiment. Please let them be safe.

“Tony, Thor, check in,” he barks over the comm. There is no reply, not even static. “Fury?” Still nothing.

The helicarrier is coming up fast. Steve clenches his jaw and pushes himself to his feet. He marches to the pilot, a young man so green you can practically smell the grass clippings. The kid’s pale face is sheened with sweat and his eyes are wide and wild.

“Report,” Steve says, putting a hand on the pilot’s shoulder.

“Sir,” the pilot gasps, “engine one is offline. I can’t get the angle to bring us into the bay.”

Steve takes in the information, assesses the relative position of the raft to the carrier. “Can you get enough lift to put her on the foredeck?” he asks.

The kid nods shakily, “I think so.”

“Then do it, son,” Steve says.

The kid licks his lips nervously, but his hands fly over the controls. The craft shudders, rising with aching slowness, but begins to move in the required direction. 

Steve doesn’t have time to wait, though. He needs to be on that ship, with its better sensors and equipment. The dull grey hull is about twenty feet away, an access gantry running along its length. Twenty feet. Steve’s made jumps that far before. He fixes his shield on his back and makes the run, arms stretching for the metal rail of the gantry. Muscles scream as he catches hold but he pulls himself up. The gantry leads to a ladder, the ladder to main obs. Steve’s chest burns. The serum in his blood can only do so much: fatigue, oxygen deprivation and the terrifying possibility of grief all make it hard to focus. Hand after hand, rung after rung he climbs, at last coming up to the deck. Several wind-battered engineers, strapped to anchor points on the bulkhead, grab on to him and pull him up and onto solid ground. Steve rolls onto his back, dragging air into his lungs.

“Are you alright, Sir?” one of the engineers asks, leaning over him.

Steve wants to say ‘no’. Captain America says “Yes.” Stifling a groan he rolls first onto hands and knees and then gets back to his feet.

The engineer hands Steve a new earpiece. “Blast wave took out any unshielded electronics,” he says. “Director Fury sent us out to find you.”

Steve nods curtly, replacing his loop. 

Almost instantaneously, Nick Fury’s dulcet tones sound in his ear. “You done using my ship as a jungle gym, Cap?”

“Fury,” Steve says, ignoring the sarcasm. “Do you have sights on Stark or Thor?”

“Not yet. Too much moving debris, playing hell with our scans.”

“And their radios took the same hit as mine.”

“I’ve got eyes on the deck looking. As soon as the civilians are off the rafts, I will start sending men down to the ground. We’ll find them.”

Steve draws a deep breath. “I want to help.”

“Nothing more to be done right now, Steve. Stand down.”

Steve clenches his fists. “I’ll stay topside, help with visual.”

“I’m sure you will,” Fury replies calmly. “We’ve got Romanoff on board, by the way.”

Steve feels his cheeks heat. “Is she okay?” One of the engineers passes him a spotter scope.

“Physically, yeah. But Banner’s gone.”

“Gone? You mean..?”

“Took off. Stole a jet.”

Steve exhales shakily, lifting the scope and turning it on the gaps in the clouds below. It’s not much, but it’s something. And right now Steve needs to be doing _something_. “Barton’s coming in on the last barge,” he says. “He needs a medic; don’t let him tell you otherwise.”

“Guy’s a bullet magnet. You should all be on danger money working with him.”

“Go easy on him,” Steve says. “He’s had a rough day.”

“A lot of that to go around.”

“Yeah,” Steve agrees quietly. 

The comm goes silent. Steve increases the magnification on his scope. The helicarrier has started to descend; the last raft must be aboard. The air is cold and damp, they’re hitting the clouds. Steve shivers as cold tendrils of mist curl around him. And then they’re through, and Steve can see the full extent of the devastation beneath. The ground is rent, an ugly open wound cut deep into the earth. It looks like some great, vengeful hand has reached down and scooped the city heedlessly away. The lake that had nestled at the city’s edge churns and boils, steam oozing across its choppy surface and crawling up the mountainside. Patches of fire burn brightly, dark smoke stretching up to the heavens. It does not look like a place where living things remain.

“C’mon Tony,” Steve whispers. He sends his scope skittering across the landscape. Rubble and destruction stare bleakly back.

“You and Thor. You’re both too stubborn to kill.”

He sees the rafts breaking away from the helicarrier again, making their way to the twisted ruins beneath.

“Fury,” he calls, tapping his ear. “Do you have anything?”

“Cap, it’s me.” It’s Maria Hill’s voice that replies. “We’ve got nothing yet. Fury’s leading the search and rescue teams.”

“Tell them to focus on the lake. If the spire had hit anywhere but in the water, we’d be seeing more evidence.”

“Got it, Cap,” Maria agrees, sounding precisely like someone who already knew what to do.

They’re low enough now that Steve can see the ground clearly without the spotter scope. The sight knocks him sick. He’s known war, he’s seen towns blown out of existence by artillery, but this is something else. It’s not just human evil, it’s... monstrous. 

“Don’t do this,” he whispers. His hands tighten on the cold metal rail in front of him. “Don’t be dead. Not here. Don’t you damn well dare.”

He feels a rush of irrational anger in his chest. “You think you get out of this so easy? It’s a hell of a long way to go to break up with a feller, Stark.” He blinks, eyes swimming with tears that threaten to fall. “Well, unless you come tell me in person, I’m not taking it. No, Sir. You don’t get to dump Captain America without at least sending a note. It’s... unconstitutional.” 

He knows what he’s doing. He’s doing what Tony would do; making an inappropriate joke, poking fun at him, reminding him to be anything other than the Cap.

“Come on,” he whispers. “I _need_ you, you arrogant, crazy son of an everloving...”

He hears the heavy clomp of metal boots connect with the deck just behind him. “Talking to yourself there, old timer?” comes the familiar, mask-distorted voice. 

Steve’s drops his chin to his chest, head bowed. He takes a deep breath, steadying himself. “Bastard,” he concludes.  
“Language.”  
Steve blinks his vision clear, sets his shoulders and turns. “There were mitigating circumstances.”  
Tony flips up his mask, and grins at Steve. “Hey, I’m not complaining.” He moves forward. “Actually, I kinda like it.”

Despite himself, Steve feels a smirk tug his cheek. “Well, I _don’t_ like being kept waiting.”

Tony holds up his metal-clad hands. “It’s not my fault I had to go fishing for demigods.”

“Thor’s okay?”

“Well, he’s out a set of drapes, but he’ll be fine, yeah.”

 _Somehow_ the gap between them has shrunk again, and they’re almost toe to toe. “That’s good,” Steve says quietly.

“Yeah, it is.” Tony’s eyelids droop, slyly seductive. In the suit he’s maybe an inch or two taller than Steve is himself, and he uses that; shifting his weight onto the balls of his feet and angling his face downwards in an unmistakeable offer.

Steve swallows thickly. “So are you planning on kissing me anytime soon, Mr. Stark?” he asks, trying to match Tony’s look with his tone.

Tony makes a show of considering it for a moment, then scrunches up his nose. “Nu-uh,” he says, dropping back onto his heels. “That’d just be showing off.”

The refusal sends a surprised chuckle huffing past Steve’s parted lips. “Tony, you just blew up a city.”

“And that’s why it’d be showing off,” Tony answers with a shrug.

Steve takes the only sensible course of action. He pouts.

“That’s fighting dirty,” Tony observes, eyes straying to Steve’s lips. The slightest flush creeps tellingly across his cheeks. “But still no. Patience, Captain. It’s a virtue.”

“You know,” Steve says dryly, “we had a word for people like you back in my day,” 

“Prick-tease?” Tony suggests.

“Annoying,” Steve counters.

Tony turns and swaggers towards the command tower. “You love it,” he casts over his shoulder.

Steve watches him for a heartbeat. Then he rubs the back of his neck and follows. “Yeah. Yeah, I guess I do,” he sighs.

****

One of the lessons Steve learned when he took on the mantle of Captain America was that even when the job is done, it’s not _done_. In the movies, the hero saves the day, gets the girl and everything fades to black. Out here, in whatever passes for real life when you’re a man from the forties frozen in an iceberg for seventy-some years, things are rarely that easy. The demands don’t simply _stop_. You can’t simply dust off your gloves and say ‘over to you, roll credits’. 

The elevator shudders to a halt, its doors opening to the barely-ordered chaos of the medical bay. Steve steps out into it. He searches through the lines of injured Sokovians; the calm and measured medical staff that move among them. Finally his eyes alight on their target. 

“Think I’ll keep this scar, Cap,” Clint says as Steve comes up beside him. He hisses as the MO attending him tightens the strapping around his midriff.

“Anything we should worry about, doc?” Steve asks.

“Through and through,” she says with a small shrug. “Nothing serious. The trax-pad would have stopped the bleeding by now if he’d quit moving about.”

“I should be helping,” Clint protests.

“You should be resting,” the medic counters.

Steve puts a hand to Clint’s should, guiding him towards the horizontal gently yet firmly. “You did a good job,” he says. “Now let them do theirs.” 

Clint puts up a second’s worth of resistance then allows Steve to guide him backwards onto the pallet. He turns his head to one side, staring into the distance. Steve follows his gaze to a line of sheet-covered bodies laid out as discretely as possible in the far corner of the medical bay. Beside one stands Wanda Maximoff, her hand placed tenderly to its chest, head bowed. A few paces away, the Vision stands as still as a sentinel, eyes fixed on the girl. His brow is folded in a little perplexed crease, but his eyes are filled with such compassion that Steve looks away, abashed.

“Pietro,” Clint confirms.

Steve nods silently.

“He saved me.” Clint’s eyes shine in the strip lights.

“He made the choice any hero makes, to give his life for another.”

“Damn punk kids.”

Steve sighs. “Yeah.”

“We’re going to look after her now, aren’t we?” Clint says. “I mean, I told her... She fought. She’s one of us.”

“I...” Steve falters. When he’d brought the Maximoff’s back to the Tower, he’d seen them as tools, allies of circumstance. He’d not really thought about what would come after. But Clint’s right. Without them things might have played out differently: this whole room could be filled with bodies rather than the walking wounded. “I’ll try,” he says. “It’ll be a hard sell, but I promise to do my best.”

Clint closes his eyes. “Try punching Hitler. Heard that worked pretty well for you in the past.”

~~~~

Were this the Tower, Steve would have been able to pinpoint any one of the team to within a matter of feet at the press of a button. As it is, he’s had to rely on the oddly flustered and vague directions of a young operative to find his next target.

He ducks his head into - which is this one? - supply closet... 7b. “Hey, uh, Thor?” he calls.

A grunt suggests that this, of the last five closets Steve has investigated, at least holds life. “That you, Thor?” he calls again, a little more loudly. 

“Steven Rogers?”

Yep, that’s Thor. Only two other people have ever called him Steven, and he doubts that either of them would choose this moment to put in an appearance.

“You alright in here?” Steve asks. Tony had claimed that Thor was unharmed, but then Tony is also the same guy who’s been known to call a cardiac arrest ‘nothing to worry about’. His judgement in these matters is sometimes a little warped.

The lack of response from Thor is troubling. Steve slips into the closet, letting the door close behind him. “Is there something wrong?” he asks.

Finally, Thor’s head appears around a metal shelving unit. “You may wish not to come further into this... restricted space,” he says.

A frown twitches on Steve’s brow. “Any reason why _you’re_ hanging about in storage closets?”

“I’m naked.”

“Oh,” Steve replies. “Er...”

Thor, in his entirety, steps out from behind the unit; a clipboard clasped strategically before him. “The leather portions of my outfit did not fare so well with immersion. I took them off to dry them but found...” A slight pink flush suffuses his cheeks, “they had become too small to clad myself in.”

“So you made your way down to the hold... like that... in order to try and find something to wear?”

“I _am_ mighty,” Thor says, his chest puffing out a little.

Without meaning to, Steve’s gaze drops to the clipboard.

“It is also quite cold in here,” Thor adds hastily.

Steve blinks a couple of times, readjusting his line of sight. “Okay. I’ll get someone to bring you something. Maybe Fury has a spare coat.”

“I would appreciate that, my friend.”

“Yeah,” Steve says. He clears his throat. “I should...” he points behind himself, towards the door.

“Indeed. We do not wish Stark becoming jealous.”

“You know,” Steve says slowly. “I think I liked it better when everyone thought I was a choirboy.”

Thor chuckles heartily. “I do not believe you.”

Steve shrugs. He opens the door, but turns back to speak over his shoulder. “Just... stay put,” he advises. “Aliens and flying cities are one thing, but I don’t think SHIELD trained its operatives to handle naked Asgardians.”

~~~~

Finding Natasha takes much less work than Thor. Steve follows the crashing.

He stops outside interrogation room 3. A nervous-looking soldier gathers himself to attention. Steve recognises him as being ex-STRIKE, presumably one of the few that didn’t turn to HYDRA. Harper, Steve’s mind provides. That’s the guy’s name. They’d actually served on a mission together, taking down an arms dealer that had managed to get his hands on a stock of Chitauri weaponry. As memory serves, Harper had been a solid soldier, handy in a fight but lacking finesse. 

“Good to see you with us Lieutenant Harper,” he says shortly. “I presume that’s Agent Romanoff?”

“Yes. Yes sir,” Harper replies, blinking as though surprised to be called by name. “I thought it best that someone stood guard in case...”

His words are cut short by a particularly loud bang.

Steve nods. He puts a hand to Harper’s well-built shoulder. “That’s okay, Lieutenant,” he says. “You can stand down. I’ll take it from here.”

“Thank you, Sir,” Harper says, visibly relieved. He turns, but Steve catches his sleeve.

“What size is your uniform, son?” he asks. 

“Um... my uniform?”

Steve looks him up and down. “Never mind, It’ll probably do. I need you to take whatever spare clothing you have to supply closet 7b on S deck.”

Harper nods and walks briskly off, leaving the corridor empty but for Steve and the sounds of destruction coming through the bulkhead. Setting his shoulders, Steve knocks on the thick, metal door. He gets no reply other than more of the same clattering. “Romanoff?” He gives it a moment. “Natasha?”

Nothing.

“Okay, I’m coming in,” he calls. “And it’s been a really long day, so if you could _not_ throw a chair at me, I’d be grateful.”

Bracing himself, he pushes into the room.

“Huh,” he says, once inside.

The room is entirely orderly, the only furniture a table and chairs that are screwed into the floor. Beside them, Romanoff sits cross legged; her eyes closed and her breathing slow and regular. A loud thump and the sound of shattering resonates through the metal deck and Steve realises that the noise is coming from the speaker in the wall.

Natasha opens her eyes and looks up at him. “It works on most people.”

“You’re scaring the soldiers,” Steve replies flatly.

Natasha chuckles darkly and without much humour. She uncurls herself and stands, flicking the speaker off and then leaning against the edge of the metal table. Steve watches the graceful flow of her moments, the apparent casualness of them. She doesn’t fool him, though. Every motion is under absolute and rigid control, her very essence held in brutal check.

“Something I can do for you, Cap?” she asks.

“Just wanted to see how you’re doing.”

“I’m fine. Nothing broken.” The barest flicker of a bitter smile crosses her lips.

A smarter man, or at least one more interested in self-preservation, might leave that there. Steve licks his lips. “About Banner...”

He sees her stomach clench, drawing herself in further on herself. “He’s gone.”

“He didn’t leave because of you,” Steve says softly.

A harsh bark breaks free of Natasha’s throat. “He didn’t stay because of me, either.”

Steve takes a step forward. He’s not quite sure what to do. He’s seen Natasha shrug off all manner of terrible things, accept them as part of the life she leads. This is different. This is the first time he’s questioned whether this is the life she _wants_. A twisting sense of empathy swirls in his stomach.

“Don’t,” she says quietly. “I’m just angry. And I’m hurt. And when I get out of this _damned_ suit, I will probably eat my own bodyweight in chocolate...” 

She stretches out her hand and takes his, squeezing it briefly before letting it fall. “But I’ll be fine.”

In that instant, her strength and determination reminds him of Peggy. His feelings for Natasha may be different, but he’s come to respect and care for her no less. This team that they’ve built, this _family_ , has become more important to Steve than he can say, and it is both humbling and frightening in equal measure.

“You know where I am if you need me,” he says.

She offers him a small yet genuine smile. “I know.”

****

A discrete beep sounds from the wall monitor followed by Maria Hill’s calm, assured voice. “That’s the last of the Sokovians disembarked, Sir. We’re ready to get back underway.”

“Point her for home, Hill,” replies ex-director Fury. He releases the internal comms and turns to Steve. “How’s the team?” he asks.

Steve sighs deeply, his body heavy against the unforgiving metal of the briefing room chair. He lifts his eyes to Fury’s face. The world’s greatest spy, inscrutable as usual, stares back.

“Clint’s going to need time, Nat’s going to need space, and Thor needed... pants.”

Fury eyebrow arches dramatically.

“It’s best not to dwell on it,” Steve replies.

“Uh huh,” Nick says flatly. “Losing Banner’s a blow.”

“Agreed. How’d he skip? I didn’t think he could pilot the Quinjet.”

“He can’t. Last visual contact had the other guy flying the bird.”

“That’s not possible,” Steve says.

“Any other day I’d agree with you.”

Steve puffs out his cheeks, letting the air go slowly. “Hell of a day,” he says.

“Hell of a day, Cap,” Nick agrees.

“For what it’s worth, thank you.”

Nick inclines his head just a fraction. “You might want to hold off on that,” he says. “This is going to get messy.”

“Which bit?” Steve replies.

“All of it, probably.”

“You’re a real comfort, Nick.”

“I can lie if you’d rather.”

Steve drops his head to his chest and shakes it slowly. His eyes slip closed, weariness of body and mind reaching up at him like dark fingers.

“You’re tired.” Fury’s voice is gentler than Steve has ever heard it. He forces his eyes back open.

“Yeah, I am,” he concedes.

“Have you debriefed Stark yet?”

“I saw him, on the flight deck.”

“But not since?”

Steve shrugs. “Tony’s not one for enjoying being checked up on.”

A tiny, knowing smile quirks at the corner of Fury’s mouth. “Somehow I don’t think he would mind if it’s you doing the checking.”

A little prickle of heat creeps up Steve’s neck. “I’m not even sure where he is now,” he says with a little cough.

“I do,” Nick replies. “I had Hill set quarters aside for you and the rest of the team. He’s in...” he consults one of the many pieces of paper strewn across his desk, “crew level 7. Bunk 43.”

“And where am I?”

“Still sat here.”

It’s a fair point.

Steve gets to his feet, muscles protesting against what feels like only moments of respite. “Alright,” he says with a sigh. “I’m on my way.”

Fury folds his arms behind his back and turns to stare out of the narrow window. “Heavy is the head, Captain.”

Steve considers him for a moment, cast in the shadows against the brilliant light. He suddenly seems older, and very much alone.


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please note, the final section breaks my own POV rule, being from a position of omniscience to allow us to see the rest of the team without Steve or Tony in the room. If it helps, think of it as a DVD extra, I kinda do.

Tony yelps (manfully and only very quietly) at the unexpected knock that sounds behind him. Unfortunately, it results in him dropping the screwdriver he has clamped between his lips and ruining the very delicate procedure he has spent the last fifteen minutes failing at.

“God damn it, stupid son of a...”

As though that were an appropriate summons, the door nudges open a fraction.

“Everything okay in here?” 

“Steve?” Tony calls superfluously. Because, of course it’s Steve. Who else on this raft, hell, maybe on this planet, could sound so bold and timid at the same time?

He peeks over his shoulder, using his body to block what he’s working on from view. He sets his smile to ‘winning charm’, but feels it soften as Steve actually steps inside.

“Hey,” he says.

Steve offers a small smile in return. “Hey,” he replies.

Oh God. They’re saps. They’re actual superhero saps.

“I heard swearing,” Steve says.

“You _almost_ heard swearing,” Tony corrects. He shifts, neck straining awkwardly with trying to keep Steve from seeing the table.

A flash of a thoughtful frown creases Steve’s brow. Damn it.

“Tony, what are you hiding?”

“Uh...”

Concern fills the larger man’s blue eyes. He takes a step forward. “Are you hurt?”

Tony sighs. “Hurt?” he says. “No.” He spins the chair to reveal the desk and his still-suited right forearm and hand. “Trapped? Yes.”

“You’re... stuck in it?”

“Stupid thing is fused.” A little flush of heat prickles Tony’s cheeks.

Steve tilts his head a little to one side. “So why are you acting like you just got caught stealing cookies?”

Tony huffs. “Because it’s _embarrassing_. I made the suit to go on _and_ come off.”

“Tony, your suit getting damaged isn’t a personal failing.”

“Should’ve stood up to the thermal challenge.”

“Of blowing up a vibranium-cored hunk of Europe?” Steve replies. “Pretty sure that even you couldn’t have predicted that eventuality.”

Tony pouts. Because, while he knows that Steve is absolutely and completely right, _admitting_ that is just not going to happen.

A tiny, knowing smile twitches at Steve’s lips. His eyes flicker between Tony’s face and his trapped arm. “So, uh...” he says, a hint of a drawl in his voice, “do you need...”

Tony rolls his eyes. “Go ahead. Say it.”

“Do you need a hand?” Steve finishes.

Tony gets to his feet, toeing the chair to one side to make enough room for Steve to stand beside him. “You know, if I wanted bad jokes, I’d talk to myself,” he grumbles.

Steve takes his suited hand and turns it over, back and forth, examining it. “Tony, you do talk to yourself. All the time.”

“If I do,” Tony says with a sniff, “it’s only because I’m the only one around here who ever makes any sense.”

There’s something oddly intimate in the way Steve touches the suit, how he traces the fabrication lines up the outer edge of the gauntlet and on to where the piece ends and Tony’s skin begins. Tony shivers as Steve’s fingers brush the smooth skin on the underside of his arm. “You know, Pepper used to hate seeing me like this,” he says.

The slight frown on Steve’s brow makes Tony fluster. “Oh, uh, yeah. Sorry. Not supposed to mention the ex- with the... uh...” Oh, hell. Well done, Stark. Way to barrel straight into a ‘what are we now’ cliché.

“It’s not that,” Steve says, shaking his head slightly. “The suit... it’s a part of you.”

Tony clears his throat. He looks at his arm and then up, into Steve’s eyes. “Yeah. Yeah it is.” There’s comprehension in Steve’s gaze, a level of understanding that’s almost too raw. No-one, not even Rhodey, has ever really ‘got’ what being Ironman means to Tony. But Steve... Steve just might. Tony forces a grin. “But right now, it’s also a kind of pinch-y part of me, so if you could just...”

“Tell me what to do.”

Tony rotates his wrist, displaying the key parts. “There’s a pressure plate top and bottom. You need to break them simultaneously. Yeah. There. Like that.” 

He watches Steve press the plates, the ripple of his jaw as he applies the necessary strength. Tony hears the crunch and feels a slight loosening of the arm-piece, but it’s not enough to pull free. Damn it.

“You’re gonna have to just pull, Steve,” he says. 

“I’ll break it.”

“Then I’ll fix it.”

Steve offers him a lopsided smile and then sets his shoulders, fingers clamping around the metal. He grunts; the tendons in his neck straining. The part of Tony’s brain that never quite turns off provides him with estimates of how much force Steve must be applying to literally rip the suit asunder. It’s... a lot. The kind of amount that makes you glad Steve is on the side of the good guys. Suddenly, there is a loud crack and the two parts separate; the top piece clattering to the floor. 

Tony makes a small, throaty moan of pleasure. “My hero,” he says. He flexes his fingers and stoops to collect the fallen part. He looks up just in time to see Steve sway, a tiny stumble that the larger man tries to conceal. 

His cheeky grin immediately falls into a concerned frown. “You okay, Cap?”

Steve offers him a wan smile. “I’m tired, is all.”

“Tired? Tired is pulling three all-nighters in a row. You look ready to drop.”

“I’m fine.”

“Bullshit.” Tony steps forward, taking hold of Steve’s biceps. “You’re shaking,” he says. 

“I’ll be fine. I just need...”

“C’mere,” Tony says, stepping forward.

“I really don’t think...”

“Come. Here.” Tony leans closer and wraps his arms around Steve; one hand coming up to the back of his neck, fingers stroking gently against the short hairs at his nape. He guides Steve’s head down, not to his mouth but to his shoulder, and holds him there, feeling the slight tremors running through the larger man’s muscles. It takes a few seconds but slowly Steve relaxes into him, body going heavy and loose. He feels the rise and fall of Steve’s chest; the deep breaths he takes warm against his shoulder.

“Tony...” Steve says, his voice slightly muffled by t-shirt.

“Steve,” Tony replies seriously. “I’m not gonna lie, I am next to useless at this kind of thing. So let’s just skip to the bit I’m good at and get you into bed.”

Steve huffs against him, half chuckle, half tut. Tony moves them to the single cot tucked up against the bare metal bulkhead wall and deposits Steve on the edge of the mattress. “Shoes off, soldier,” he says.

Steve complies, stooping to tug off his boots and tuck them tidily under the bunk. He shuffles back onto the bed, arm sprawling across the pillow but leaving enough of a gap beside him to make his intentions clear.

“You’re tired,” Tony reminds, waggling his finger at him.

“And you’re not?” 

Tony snorts. “You bet your sweet ass I am,” he says with half a smirk. “But I’m a good couple of hours off my brain letting me sleep, so you go on ahead.”

The faintest of petulant pout twitches Steve’s lips. On a whim, Tony leans in and presses a gentle kiss to them. He covers the flash of uncommon shyness he feels as he pulls back by running his hand over Steve’s hair. Steve’s eyes flutter closed and stay closed, a little smile now in place of the pout. 

Tony watches him for a few seconds, giving himself over to the rare sweetness of the moment. It’s the kind of memory you hoard, in part because you can never really express why it’s so important, but also for fear that anyone you tell might reach for a bucket. Ridiculous, tender embarrassment curls in his stomach and he forces himself to leave the bedside and go sit at the desk. He tinkers quietly with the broken gauntlet for a little while, splitting it down further, stripping out some of the more valuable components. He hears Steve’s breathing deepen and then turn into soft snores. His own chest starts to rise and fall more slowly, fingers growing less dextrous. He stifles a yawn.

He looks over at the bed. Steve has turned in his sleep, facing the wall. The line of his back calls to Tony, the warmth and solid comfort that he knows he can find there. He toes off his shoes, kicking them under the table, and stands. He crosses to the bed and, as carefully as he can, wriggles into the space left for him. The bed makes a disgruntled creak but Steve barely stirs, even as Tony tangles them together. He nuzzles a kiss to the base of Steve’s neck, breathing in the scent of skin. His eyes close.

“This is what I get for dating an older guy,” he says quietly.

****

Mmm.

Waking up from a really deep sleep can take two distinct paths. First, a jolting disorientation that asks ‘where the hell am I?’, ‘what time is it?’ and ‘Oh God, am I wearing pants?’ The second is more along the lines of ‘Don’t care. I am _comfy_ ’.

This is the second situation.

Tony shifts against the form sharing space and body heat with him, the friction of fabric a demanding sensation against his skin. He nuzzles his nose in further, smelling soap and that special kind of adrenaline-infused sweat that you get with all the _best_ kinds of workout. There’s bare flesh against his palm, and his fingers work it absently, touching without real purpose other than to feel.

Mmm. Nice.

He’s coming more awake, and part of him really resents that. After all, this unfocussed pleasure is pretty stellar. But the more rational, or at least insistent, parts of him point out that _focussed_ pleasure can be rather pleasant as well. 

“Mmm... Steve...”

Tony thinks that maybe actually came out of his mouth, rather than just being part of his foggy musings. He’s aware enough now to know that’s who he’s in bed with, and that it’s kind of wonderful. He’s getting to wake up with Steve Rogers, to be with him in ways that - to be totally honest - he’s only barely able to dare to want. Steve’s back is a relaxed curve, following the undulations of Tony’s chest and stomach. His hip makes an angled peak and the swell of his ass fits firmly against Tony’s pelvis as though offering the solution to the puzzle of anatomy. Tony lingers over that thought, letting the haziness pass into clarity, drawing down into...

Oh. Oh man.

He shifts his hips back, backside hanging precariously over the edge of the narrow cot. It isn’t that he’s... well, no, actually - yes - that is exactly what he is... but it’s also just so...

Damn it, Tony. Get a grip. Or don’t. That probably won’t help matters.

“Tony?”

Tony squeezes his eyes back closed for a second. Steve’s breathing had been deep and regular, but Tony had failed to recognise they weren’t slow enough for a sleeping super-soldier.

“Mmhmm,” he answers.

Steve shifts, turning in an impossibly fluid manoeuvre to bring them face to face. “Everything alright?” he asks.

Tony gives him a winning, and hopefully rather distracting, smile. “Oh, just peachy.”

A curious frown deepens the crease between Steve’s eyebrows. “Then what’s...”

The smile falters on Tony’s face. Instead, he offers a flurry of tiny gestures; a little scrunch of his nose, a dip of his chin, a slight apologetic shrug.

Steve’s eyes widen just a fraction, blue irises circling large pupils.

“Sorry,” Tony says quietly.

Steve’s lips twitch. “Sorry?” His expression eases into a crooked smile. “Tony, you don’t need to treat me like a blushing bride.”

A small, huffing laugh escapes Tony. “The fact that you just used the phrase ‘blushing bride’ would make me question that.”

Reaching out, Steve runs his fingers lightly over the outside of Tony’s palm and then weaves their fingers together so his own, larger hand covers Tony’s. With a gentle tug, he draws the knot towards him and down between their bodies. “Where this is going, we’re going together,” he says softly.

Tony giggles. Yep, that’s right. World-renowned industrialist, billionaire, genius and now _giggler_ in the face of seduction. Put it on the business cards. 

He squeezes his lips together in response to Steve’s arched eyebrow. A smile still tugs at the corners of his mouth and he clears his throat to stifle a chuckle. “I, uh... went a bit bridal there,” he says ruefully.

Steve untangles their fingers to reach up and stroke the over-warm skin of Tony’s cheek. Then, as though proving some point, he brushes them over the groomed bristles of Tony’s beard and across the flesh of his lower lip. Tony’s mouth parts slightly, a little whine sounding in his throat, and that’s as much as it takes; he can’t even say who closes the gap but close it does.

It’s like the other times they’ve done this and yet different. Tony wonders in the grey spiral that is his diminishing cogency if Steve ever kisses the same way twice. This is all tussle and tongue, and screw world peace: he decides that finding out might just be his new mission. In a not unimpressive display of physical prowess, Steve half-pulls, half-lifts Tony bodily over him. A whole new barrage of sensations threaten to overwhelm Tony; the inescapable reality of Steve’s willingness, the hitches in his breath, the little losses of control that he can’t quite hide. He slows the kiss purposefully and then drops his mouth from Steve’s, running it down over his chin and neck, feeling the graze of stubble and tasting salt. He runs his hands along Steve’s sides, rucking up the tight material of his shirt to expose his stomach. Tony has never been one to idolise muscles for muscles sake, but you would have to be crazy not to appreciate the fine definition of Steve’s torso. He shifts his weight, bowing his head and transferring his attention lower. He hears Steve gasp, and then feels a shudder travel through them both.

“Really?” he murmurs, lips brushing pale skin.

A second shudder is accompanied by a pronounced creaking. Tony lifts his chin to stare up the length of Steve’s torso, snagging his companion’s eyes.

“Um...” Steve says.

Tony does the math. “Oh, _really_?” he says again, somewhat more whinily than the first time.

Suddenly there’s a crack and the bed gives, sagging emphatically in the middle. “ _Really?!_ ” Tony yelps as he’s sent tipping forward. He braces himself with his hands planted either side of Steve’s shoulders, their faces held a few inches apart. Steve stares up at him, eyes wide and filled with dawning realisation.

“Well, I can honestly say that’s only ever happened to me once before,” Tony says. 

Steve’s nostrils flare, a little spluttered laugh breaking past his lips. “Ladies and gentlemen. Tony Stark: international playboy.”

Tony pouts. “For that, you get to explain to Fury how one of his bunks got busted up.”

Steve laughs fully, and it’s infectious. Tony drops his forehead to his shoulder and they shake with it, formed into an awkward ‘v’ of poorly fabricated furniture. Steve’s arms come up around him, holding him loosely.

“This is how the military deters fraternisation, isn’t it?” Tony grumbles into his chest.

“Yep. It’s in the handbook. Regulation 27 point 3.”

Tony groans. “When we get home, I’m going to have R&D pull a complete redesign on this thing. Rip out a load of unnecessary walls, thin down the hull with microfilament reinforcement. Double beds for everyone.”

“Tony, when we get back to New York, you have a suite.”

Tony lifts his head to focus on Steve’s face. “I have a suite,” he echoes.

“With a _really_ big bed.”

“With a really big, really well-made bed,” he agrees.

Steve quirks up an eyebrow meaningfully.

Tony pushes himself to a sitting position, knees deep in collapsed mattress and tangled sheets. “You think this boat would go faster if I got out and pushed?”

Steve chuckles, holding onto Tony’s flanks to help guide him out of what can only be described as their pit of cock-blocky frustration. Clambering to his feet, Tony smoothes down his t-shirt and tugs his pants into a slightly less bunched position. Steve’s eyes follow his movements. “You know,” he says, “Fury sent me down here to debrief you.”

“Well, mission failure, Cap,” Tony replies. He holds out his hands and braces, letting Steve use him as leverage to pull himself from the bed.

“You think that’s what he intended?”

Tony shrugs. “With Nick, anything’s possible. He’s like spy zero, he knows things about you before you know them yourself.”

“To be fair, I think the whole team figured this one out before we did.”

“You get lots of meaningful looks and unsolicited advice, too?”

“Like you wouldn’t believe,” Steve says.

“Damn spies. We need new roomies.”

Steve rubs the back of his neck. “Actually, I’ve got some thoughts about that.”

****

 

“Eugh, there is literally nothing on.” Clint throws the remote down on the floor in disgust and flops back onto the mound of cushions propping him upright on the couch. Somehow the television has managed to settle on that reality TV show that Clint absolutely doesn’t watch.

From her position as his foot-rest, Natasha offers him a spoon of New Jersey’s best Gelato. He stretches his neck and she rolls her eyes as she pops the spoon into his waiting mouth. “Don’t you have a home to go to, baby bird?” she asks.

“Why, are you bored of me, Nursey Nat?”

Natasha snorts and reclaims her spoon, pausing only to bop him on the nose with it. “I’ll let you calling me that slide _once_ , Barton, and only because I know how much morphine you’re still on.”

A chuckle sounds from the couch to their left. Nat turns towards it. “What are you laughing at, Mr God of Dubious Fashion?”

Thor lifts a mighty eyebrow, but any sense of regal authority he might normally exhibit is somewhat undercut by the faded-to-pink Backstreet Boys t-shirt and khaki cargo shorts combination he’s mysteriously acquired and, perhaps more mysteriously, retained. “I was simply wondering how the two of you have never had congress,” he says.

“And who says we haven’t?” Natasha replies equitably.

Thor’s mouth flaps just a little bit. “Well, he and you are... and the lady Laura... and...”

Clint offers Thor the same, impartial look that Natasha has on her face. “I wasn’t _born_ married. And me and Nat go _way_ back.”

“Laos,” Nat says.

“Bhutan,” Clint counters.

“Belarus,” Nat returns.

“Aruba,” Clint says, a smile twitching his lips.

Natasha covers her mouth. “Oh, God. I forgot about Aruba.”

Clint looks hurt. “You _forgot_ Aruba?”

Nat shrugs. “Well, come on, it wasn’t your finest moment.”

“Hey! They’re _all_ my finest moments.”

“Oh please, you were too busy giving yourself high-fives.”

“I think you’ll find _you_ were too busy falling for my boyish charms...”

Thor’s eyes are wide, following the verbal two-and-fro. “I... I cannot tell if you are jesting with me,” he admits.

Nat smiles smugly. “And neither will you,” she says.

A quietly cleared throat sounds from the last couch of the couch trio. “I know.”

Clint twists on his cushions. “Now, what did we talk about? No using your creepy witch powers on fellow Avengers?”

Wanda, her knees gathered up under her chin offers him a small smile, the first since Sokovia. “I do not need to read your minds. It is obvious.”

“Girl thing,” Natasha explains with a shrug.

Wanda nods.

Clint tuts, settling back onto his pillow mountain. He nods at the ceiling. “So what do you _girls_ think they’re doing up there, then?”

“Well, Clint,” Natasha begins, “when two people care very much about each other...”

“Do you not have children?” Wanda asks.

“Yeah, but _still_?” Clint replies with a grimace. “They’ve been holed up in Tony’s suite for _hours_.”

“Steve does have that super serum going for him,” Nat says. “And Stark... well, he’s Stark.”

“And, as your Midgardian ‘Lifestyle Magazines’ state, there are many forms of intimacy...”

“You read Lifestyle magazines, Thor?” Natasha asks with faux-innocence. 

Thor’s cheeks flush a little. “Well, no. But Jane...”

Clint holds up his hands. “Okay, I retract the question. There are only so many mental images I can take.”

Natasha pats his hand fondly. A few moments pass in quiet, just the sounds of ‘talent’ coming from the TV. Thor stretches out to fill his couch and even Wanda unfurls slightly, twisting so that her feet just nudge into the seat beside her and within an inch or so of the final member of their little collective.

Clint smiles, a small, private smile.

As though aware of the thoughts in his direction, the Vision breaks his silence. 

“I think they are having sex,” he says.


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so we're moving post-AoU now. This chapter is totally safe IMO but there are bits and pieces from the first CA:CW trailer from November in the next chapter, including a character that might be spoilery if you haven't seen the promo. If that's something you want to avoid, you might be best stopping here and coming back for the end once you've seen CA:CW.

Tony flops face first onto the bed, shoulders shaking with laughter. “Somebody check if I still have legs,” he says, voice muffled by pillows.

“ _That’s_ what you get for dating an older guy,” Steve remarks, settling back into the muzzy bedding and throwing a lazy arm over his head.

Tony rolls onto his side, indignant shock warring for face-space alongside a smug grin. “You were supposed to be asleep for that,” he scolds.

“I was _nearly_ asleep.”

“You were snoring.”

Steve frowns. “I don’t snore.”

“You _so_ do.” Tony wriggles himself closer, nestling in under Steve’s outstretched arm.

“Jerk.”

“Captain America doesn’t get to call people a jerk.”

“Well it’s a good job I’m not wearing the uniform, then, isn’t it?” The lack of protest from Steve’s bedfellow is telling. “I’m _not_ wearing the uniform,” he says.

Tony wraps his arm over Steve’s bare chest. “Well, obviously not now. I’m beat.”

“The youth of today,” Steve grumbles.

“Okay, that joke’s getting creepy.”

“You started it.”

“And I’m stopping it.”

“And you’re used to getting your way, Mr. Stark?”

With a groan, Tony rolls himself up and over Steve, settling back on Steve’s thighs. “Not always,” he says with a lopsided smile. “I’d say it’s about eighty-twenty.”

Steve reaches up and puts his hand to Tony’s cheek, the curve of his palm following the angle of Tony’s jaw. Then he trails his hand down Tony’s neck until it comes to rest against the welt where the arc reactor was removed. He can feel the beat of Tony’s heart through the irregular skin.

Tony’s eyes reveal first embarrassment, onto understanding and concern. “You going to tell me what that witch showed you?”

Steve lets his hand drop. “Her name’s Wanda. She’s on our side now.”

Tony stares back silently.

Steve shifts under the weight of both Tony’s body and his gaze. He thinks of Peggy’s knowing smile, of the sudden silence of an empty room. He feels the warmth of the flesh pressed to his and the softness of the bed beneath him.

He wets his lips, speaks quietly. “She showed me that even when you think you’ve won, you can still lose.”

Tony doesn’t reply straight away, and the rare gravity with which he treats the confession makes Steve’s stomach twist. Instead, he reaches out and runs his hand over Steve’s hair, smoothing and soothing. A strange look fills his face, an aching fondness tinged with regret. “Sometimes it’s okay just to take the win,” he says softly.

They melt together again, mingling kisses and breaths and bodies until they find a position of rest; Steve’s head to Tony’s chest, loosely held by the arm around his shoulders. He feels Tony take a deep breath.

“You’re right,” Tony says. “About... Wanda. If nothing else, she’s safer where she can be trained, monitored. And she’s earned that chance. But, Steve...” 

Steve senses the tensing in Tony’s stomach, the slightest tremble in his voice.

“...me and her, it won’t work. We’ll just be a reminder to each other; her parents, her brother, what I...” He breaks off, swallows. “Maybe I deserve that, but she doesn’t.”

“Tony...”

“No,” Tony says, more firmly. “It’s okay. As Iron Man, I’m just a guy in a tin can. I can be replaced. But I’m not just that. I’m Tony Stark, and there’s things I can do _as_ Tony Stark, maybe some more important than putting on the suit and looking really cool.”

Steve’s throat tightens, as though trying to stop words from leaving it. He swallows past it, trying to force his voice level. “You’re leaving the team?” 

“More... moving to the reserves. Think about it, Steve. You’re great at getting people on side, all that hearts-and-minds stuff. But politics... that’s a game for guys like me. And it’s one we’re going to have to play if the team is to survive in any shape or form.”

Steve has been a part of this world too long now not to know the truth of Tony’s words. Fury is right, Sokovia is going to leave a mess, and it isn’t the only one. The rumbles of Washington still reach him in periodic summons to hearings, and there’s only so many times he can say ‘it was the right thing to do’. Tony speaks the same language as the Hill, that ability to equivocate and attack an argument from both sides. From a selfish perspective, it’s a relief to imagine not having to be the one doing it, and to have someone there who he can trust. But, from an even more selfish perspective, Steve can’t ignore the reality of casting Tony in that role. To be effective, he’ll have to distance himself from the team, from part of himself. Like everything else in this life, there’ll be a cost.

“You know what it’ll mean,” Steve says quietly.

“I know,” Tony agrees with a sigh. “But I figure you’d want to keep this from prying eyes anyway.”

Steve frowns. “I’m not ashamed.”

“No, but it’s complicated. You know how it was with Pep, and this... will be more so.”

Steve twists, tipping his chin up to stare into Tony’s eyes. “You’d think I’d find it a comfort that some things haven’t changed all that much since my time.”

“They’ve changed,” Tony says. A sharp grimace tugs his cheek. “They’re changing,” he corrects.

“But this goes beyond you and me,” Steve says.

“As much as it pains me to say, yes.”

Steve turns back to stare up to the ceiling, the star-like pin lights that dot its surface and cast a gentle blue light into the darkening room. He listens to the beat of Tony’s heart, the swish of air entering and exiting his lungs; intimate noises that fill him with a peculiar sense of pride. The skin of Tony’s chest is growing cool and Steve tugs the rumpled bedding up to cover them. He feels Tony’s breathing change, the preparation to speak.

“If we’re taking Wanda into the fold,” he says, “I think we should give the Vision a shot as well.”

Steve chews the inside of his lip thoughtfully. “I agree,” he says after a pause. “And with Clint out, I wonder if we should ask Sam to sign on.”

“Your buddy from DC?” Tony asks.

“Yeah.”

“A falcon for a hawk. Nice. Sticking to the bird theme. You’re still going to need a heavy hitter.”

“Any thoughts?”

“Rhodey comes to mind.”

“You think you can convince his superiors to assign him to a non-governmental agency?”

“I think they’ll do better than that. He didn’t exactly get official sanction to help out in Sokovia.”

“Ah.”

“Yeah. The brass is pissed, but they’re not dumb enough to take action against him, not when he saved all those civilians. But if he asks for retirement...”

“They’ll jump at the chance. You think that’s what he wants?”

Tony shrugs against the pillows. “At his heart, Rhodes is a patriot. He wants what’s best for his country.” He chuckles darkly. “To be honest, I’m surprised he didn’t ditch me and sign on with you years ago.”

Steve snorts. “I don’t think so. Man loves you, Tony.”

Back arching in a stretch, Tony yawns. “I am kinda lovable.”

“Uh huh,” replies Steve. “So what do you want to do now? Sleep or shower?”

“Pizza,” Tony says. “I bet the kids haven’t had anything but ice cream since we got home.”

Steve rolls out of the bed, tossing a pillow at Tony’s face. “If I don’t get to play on my age, you don’t get to refer to our team-mates as if they’re our children.”

Tony dumps the pillow on the floor, starfishes in the empty bed. “Aw, not even Barton?”

Steve leans on the doorframe to the bathroom and folds his arms across his chest. “If I agree, will you come and get in this shower with me?”

****

“Hey, Cap. Any of that pepperoni and olive left?”

Steve lifts the lid on the relevant box. “Last slice,” he says.

Clint beckons it towards him. “Gimme.”

Tony raises an eyebrow at him. “Magic word.”

“What?”

“Magic word,” repeats Tony.

“Uh... please?”

Steve passes the box over. “There you go, son,” he says.

Tony smirks.

“’ou guys um gon ‘eird,” Clint says around a mouthful of pizza.

****

The move out to upstate makes sense. Steve knows it does. Even with Clint on extended paternity leave, Thor back in Asgard and Banner MIA, bringing the new members onto the team would have meant yet more remodelling of the tower. Plus building a training centre away from prying eyes gives Fury somewhere to put the recruits to the new-and-sure-as-hell-better-be-improved SHIELD through their paces. And, as Tony rightly says, moving out of the city shows that the Avengers take the safety of the resident population seriously. It’s as politically astute as it is practical.

It’d all be dandy, except that the morning Tony floated the idea had been the first time Steve looked at that ostentatious hunk of glass and steel and truly thought ‘this could be home’. They’d been sat in the kitchen; Widow poking at a bowl of cereal, Barton and Thor daring each other to finish a three-day-old pizza, Tony threatening to make eggs. It had been pretty close to perfect. And now... the last thing that Steve wants to do is sound ungrateful, but this is the third place he’s lived in as many years. Sometimes it seems as though the moment he finds even just a hint of peace, something blows through and tears it away. 

No. That’s not fair. This is a great facility, it’s exactly what the team needs. There’s everything they could wish for right at hand; training ground, gym, labs. Each of them has a suite to rival Tony’s. And maybe, just maybe, that’s part of the problem. At the tower they all had their own space but, more often than not, they ended up stumbling into each other and staying that way just for the companionship. He and Sam still get to hang out, mostly while chasing down ghost stories, but even that has taken on a different edge now that Sam is on the team. Working out, too. A simple, friendly sparring session suddenly becomes a way to ‘prove’ yourself to the boss. Sure, there had always been competitiveness on the team, but it came with a side-helping of enough ego that Steve had never felt... felt...

Alone. 

He never realised how much he’d grown to enjoy being surrounded by people, by peers, until he no longer was. 

His ‘office’ is a perfect example. When Tony had shown it to him, Steve had said ‘thank you’. It was only polite. What Steve had wanted to say, however, was: ‘why do I need an office’? He’d never had a separate work-space back at the tower and things had been just fine. It’s a grand office - in all senses of the word. One wall is all windows, looking out over training field. The floor seems to be made of polished marble, but it’s warm underfoot if you happen to have had a long day and decide to take your boots off. Adjoining it, there’s a private bathroom suite that twinkles with spotlights and mirrors as though it’s a fancy hotel lobby rather than being, let’s be honest, just a john. 

And then there’s the desk. It’s a big desk. It’s the kind of big desk that even a big man can feel small behind. Almost embarrassingly extravagant. It is kinda beautiful, though. Unlike the rest of the facility’s furniture, it’s real wood; dark and rich, polished to a mirror-shine. 

Not that you’d know to look at it sometimes. Despite Steve’s best efforts, a goodly proportion of the desk is given over to files, papers, notes, sticky labels. Even before SHIELD fell, Steve filled out reports on his little hand-held computer thingie. Tablet, that’s the word. At the tower, he’d gotten used to talking them out with JARVIS, trusting the digital assistant to handle the business of submitting and filing. It’s a method he’s continued to use, even though the facility’s interface is less personable than JARVIS had been. 

The paperwork, then, isn’t of his creation. It’s things that people send up to him: mission reports, project briefs, personnel files, psyche evals... almost everything lands on his desk in hard format. Steve isn’t sure whether people are trying to be thoughtful, staying old-school for the old-guy, or whether they just think he’s too antiquated to use email. He’d also wondered, for a time, why all of it was migrating to him. Nothing has technically changed about his position, he’s still just the leader of the Avengers. The R&D teams, finance, medical... they’d never reported to him in the past. On a whim one day, Steve had asked the computer to display a few old records, from after SHIELD disbanded. He’d been more than a little surprised to see that each one held a very specific identifier, a thumb-print capture belonging to one Anthony Stark. 

He misses Tony. He knew he would, but he didn’t expect to feel the constant hollow ache in his stomach quite as acutely as he does. After all, it’s not like they’ve really been together long enough for Steve to get used to waking up beside him, feeling Tony’s warm body cradled around him. But the need to kiss him softly or be touched by those clever fingers is never far away. Tony, who can be urgent to the point of desperation, or slow and teasing enough to test every last thread of Steve’s endurance; that beautiful, crazy, frustrating, amazing goddam son of a...

“Cap?”

Steve looks up sharply, his fingers immediately releasing their grip on the edge of the wood. “Tony? What are you doing here?”

Tony smirks down at him. “I need a reason now to come visit my own building?”

“Well, no, of course not, but I thought...”

“You thought..?” Tony’s eyes slip over his body, and Steve knows he is reading the faint signs there. He feels the heat in his cheeks blossom further and the warm, fluttery tension in his stomach deepen.

With deliberate casualness, Tony stalks around to Steve’s side of the desk and leans back against the wood. He’s wearing one of his three-piece suits, charcoal with a darker thread. He looks good and, this being Tony, damn well knows it. But giving him the satisfaction of actually acting like it? Well, that’s another thing. Steve settles into his chair and locks eyes with him, trying to match flippant expression for flippant expression. It’s with some surprise that it’s Tony who breaks first.

“I missed you,” he says quietly, reaching out. 

Steve doesn’t need more of a prompt to be on his feet and closing the space. “Hey, I missed you too. You know that.” He brushes the hair back at Tony’s temple and studies his face with more care. There are new lines around his eyes, shadows hiding in them. “Tony, what’s wrong?”

Tony takes a deep breath that shakes on the exhale. “Nothing. Not really. I just... I’m used to making more headway than this.”

The thought that flashes through Steve’s head must show on his face because Tony tuts at him.

“I don’t mean I’m used to getting my _own_ way,” he scolds. “It just feels like there’s something I can’t break into, things that are being hidden. And it pisses me off.”

“We knew there would be some resistance. You can’t expect just to walk into Washington and everyone welcome you with open arms.”

Tony smiles ruefully. “You’ve met me, right? Of course I can.”

Steve rolls his eyes, a fond smile tweaking the corners of his lips. “You just have to be patient. Once people realise that you’re there to serve the interests of the American people, not just those of the Avengers, doors will open.”

“Or I could call in some big boy favours and get them opened for me.”

“Or you could do that,” Steve agrees with a sigh. Tony lifts his chin a fraction, lips parting with just a flash of tongue, and Steve takes the hint.

“So if... your set on this play...” he says between kisses, “When do you make it?”

“Already done,” Tony murmurs, hands tugging at the hem of Steve’s shirt. “I have a meeting first thing in the morning.”

Steve whines. It’s not the most flattering noise he’s ever made, but in the circumstances he thinks Tony might forgive him. “So you can’t stay?”

“Sadly not,” Tony replies with a slight shrug. “So we’ll just have to make the best of the time we’ve got.” He pulls Steve hard against him, arms looping around his back to hold him close. His fingers stroke the short hairs at the nape of Steve’s neck in the way he knows makes him shudder.

Steve gives himself over to the kiss. More than admitting that he cared for Tony, more than what they’ve done together; that has been the hardest thing for Steve to get used to. He’d thought that battle would teach him to function on instinct, muscle memory, flowing from move to move and opponent to opponent. Maybe for some guys it was like that, but for him it was never so simple: he was always looking for the advantage, the fastest way to end it. Strategy, the objective; they were never far from his mind. But with this, with _Tony_ , he’s learning to just let go and trust his reactions.

Or... he’s trying at least. Because no matter how much he loses himself to the press of Tony’s body or the hot, damp wreath of gasped breaths, a disjointed part of his mind tells him that something needs his attention.

Tony takes advantage of him turning his head to kiss along his jaw, finding the tender skin just beneath his ear to tease with his tongue and teeth. Steve looks out of the window just in time to see Wanda levitate to the level of the office, pull a hard turn and fly straight for a free-falling Sam. At the last moment, Sam spreads his wings and pulls up sharply, Wanda sailing past him harmlessly.

“Training exercise,” Steve says aloud, his voice tight with stifled need.

Tony breaks off to follow his gaze. “Your little Witch is doing better, finer control. She’ll make a flier yet.” He wriggles against Steve and tries to snag his mouth again, hands simultaneously moving to unfasten the clasp of Steve’s belt.

“They’ll see,” Steve hisses, trying to pull back.

Tony huffs, almost a laugh, not quite frustration, and slides his hand into Steve’s pants’ pocket.

“Tony!”

Tony smirks as he pulls out Steve’s phone. He points it at the wall of windows that look out over the training field, fingers dancing over the smooth surface. Suddenly the room darkens as the glass turns a smoky grey.

Tony tosses the phone down onto the desk and turns his smug grin on Steve. “Wirelessly-activated pleochroic privacy glass. Honestly, did you not read the manual I left you?”

“If you left one written in _English_ I might have,” Steve replies. 

Tony presses a quick, fond kiss to the tip of his nose. “I’ll add some pictures. Now where were we?” He shuffles himself back so he is sat on the desk, parting his legs wide enough for Steve to settle between them. “Oh yeah, we were about to put this thing’s 600lb weight rating to the test.”

Steve puts his hands on Tony’s thighs, feeling the firm flesh slipping under the suit. “How much of this building did you buy specifically so we could make out?”

“Somewhere between eighteen and twenty percent,” Tony replies a little too quickly.

“Uh huh,” Steve says, letting his already undone belt get tugged free before Tony pulls him forward into a messy kiss. “You really wanna go here?” he mumbles, fingers busy with the buttons of Tony’s shirt. “You wouldn’t rather go to bed?” 

He feels Tony’s smile against his mouth, the heat of his breath. “I love that you treat it as an either or.”


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're definitely going post-AoU now and into the run up to CA:CW. But as I've not seen anything that isn't in the public domain, I don't know if it counts as spoilery. If you've (somehow) managed to stay away from all the promo, then maybe wait until after you've watched the film to read.

It’s still dark when Tony’s silent alarm buzzes him awake. His first instinct is to screw his eyes tighter together, denying his need to be conscious at 4am. The bed is warm, and Steve’s skin is warmer. The scent of Steve’s neck fills his nose, short hairs tickling as he nuzzles a kiss to the other man’s nape. Reluctantly he untangles himself and clambers off the mattress. Steve makes a grumbled noise, turning onto his front, but doesn’t wake. Knowing how little sleep the super soldier requires, and how poorly he does even when he needs to, the sense of utter relaxation that seeps from his sleeping form fills Tony with sorrowful satisfaction. Leaving him like this, leaving him at all, is hard. And not just for the obvious reasons, although they are pretty damn compelling. It’s that being with Steve is something Tony can be sure about. It’s raw; it’s exciting and it’s utterly honest. Nothing Steve does could be anything but. Calling him pure would be a stretch, and any illusions to him being innocent got thrown out the window some time back, but there is goodness in him, an utter lack of duplicity, that Tony needs. 

Things in DC are worse than he let on.

Sure, he’s invited to the meetings; the hearings; the big-ticket events, places where they tell him how grateful they are for everything he’s done, how fortunate the world should feel to have Avengers prepared to give everything for it. But the key word is always ‘should’. It took his ear a while to readjust to it, to listening not only to what was said but what wasn’t. But as soon as he did, he realised that there were whole conversations happening around ‘should’ that he wasn’t a party to. Closed-door hearings that didn’t appear in official schedules, innocuous-seeming requests for data coming in to Stark International that fell into those same holes when traced back. But the more he looked, the less he found. 

His first thought was the same as Steve’s: it was personal. He’s the new guy in town, he’s fresh out of bed (quite literally, although there’s no way they could know that) with the source of their discontent. Politics can be petty and politicians more so. But Tony... well, Tony knows how to win people over. He’s charmed his way into and out of enough supposedly secret meetings in his time to prove it. 

The next thought was that it was professional, that someone was working against his company. The data requests fuelled that: telemetry information for the Quinjet, financial statements dating back to before he put a stop to Stark’s arms dealing. The thing that brought it to his attention was a request, ostensibly from a media outlet under the freedom of information, for biometric data on the team. ‘Putting a human face on heroes’, they called it. And there’s a chance that, had the data not held the potential to reveal Stark-tech secrets, it would have been released. After all, what does it matter if the world knows how fast Steve’s heart beats, or that Widow’s oxygen saturations dropped to 93% while at 15000 feet? No, it was the fact that that data was collected by patented subcutaneous transmitters keyed to an individual’s bioelectric signature that triggered his involvement. Tracking it back, though, he found that the newspaper in question only forwarded the query, that it came from an anonymous source, one that Tony couldn’t find no matter what he tried. And that bothered him. It _bothers_ him. Because it means that there’s a player or players out there capable of hiding their involvement from him; someone with strings long enough to pull from on high and still not get tangled. 

He toes his shoes on and slips into his jacket, casting a last, longing look at the bare sweep of Steve’s spine outlined in late moonlight. He turns his back on it, making for the private elevator down to the garage. As the doors close on Steve’s suite, his chest tightens, already missing the comfort of the other man’s presence. 

The elevator doors whoosh open on the garage level, and Tony steps out into the familiar scent of gasoline and metal. DUM-E looks up hopefully and whirrs enthusiastically as Tony stops to pet the robot’s shiny head. A smaller mech, DUM-R, weaves between his legs like an excited puppy.

“Seen my car keys, boy?” he asks.

DUM-R makes an innocent sounding chirp, clawed head tipping to one side.

“Keys,” Tony repeats, more slowly and clearly.

DUM-R scuttles off, coming back a few moments later with a small screwdriver clutched in its claws.

Tony plucks it from the mech’s clutches, a small smile pulling at his mouth. “Aw, I want to stay as well kiddo, but grampy’s gotta work.”

DUM-R slouches disappointedly and goes to the far side of the garage, rummaging under a pile of scraps. It comes back sheepishly, bearing Tony’s keys. Tony takes them and DUM-R moves to DUM-E’s side, the bigger robot stooping to tap at the smaller mech’s head in a parody of Tony’s fond action. 

Tony watches them as he climbs into his car, placing the screwdriver he’s still holding into the glovebox. He sighs as he pulls away from the complex, a faint smile drawing his lips into a thin line. In a better world, it wouldn’t have to be like this: hiding, leaving, snatching peace in the spaces in between. But then, Tony knows that there’s a worse world; one with nothing but cold and death. If he has to give up lazy morning make-out sessions and spending time with his carbon-fibre family to keep it at bay, then that’s what he’ll do.

It doesn’t mean he has to like it.

****

“Mr. Stark. This way please.” A guard leads him through the public areas of one of D.C’s less assuming office buildings. The crowds thin out as they move further in, until they pass through a security checkpoint where Tony is told to turn in his phone. The guard leaves him with a black-suited, indoor-sunglasses wearing goon that couldn’t scream ‘secret services’ more if he actually did. The agent pats him down vigorously, although what he expects to find that the concealed scanners and x-ray emitters haven’t already is anybody’s guess. 

“Hey,” Tony says to the surly-faced searcher. “I feel like I should get your number, take you out for dinner.”

“Come through,” the agent grunts.

Tough crowd.

The last door is a heavy, cast metal affair, with a card-lock, thumb-print and retina scanner. The secret services chump goes through the motions as Tony tries to calculate how long it would take him to crack it. Maybe a minute with his phone, five without. Then he sees a small HAMMER logo on one of the panels and scales his estimate _way_ down.

Finally the door opens with a swish of nothing-in-nothing-out recycled air. He steps through, leaving his charming and erudite companion behind. The room he enters is lined with monitors, set out in austere colours and bare metal fittings. In the middle of the main room is a long and intimidating conference table, at the head of which is an over-large chair with its back turned to him.

“Mr. Stark. I believe you wanted to meet with me.”

The voice that greets Tony has an irritatingly familiar ring to it. But then, he has met a lot of overly-dramatic assholes in his time, so it doesn’t really narrow it down.

“I am _loving_ all this Bond-Villain-Secret-Base stuff,” he says casually, spinning one of the empty seats with his hand. “But I’m genuinely concerned someone is about to jump out and charge me with copyright infringement, so...”

The big chair turns to reveal an older man with greying hair and a bristling moustache. In fact, all of him seems to bristle. He’s a bristley-looking kind of guy with a face more familiar than his voice: familiar enough to put a name to.

“General Ross,” Tony drawls. “I thought you were...”

“Retired?” Ross suggests.

Tony offers him an unconvinced smile. “Yeah, let’s go with that,” he says.

General Thaddeus Ross. Once upon a time, he’d been the Army’s sweetheart, the guy chosen to put the super-soldier programme back together. Of course, it hadn’t gone so well and he’d ended up in the ass-end of nowhere playing camp counsellor for a handful of supervillains.

“I thought about it,” Ross says, linking his hands behind his head and giving Tony a predatory smile. “But then some very important people started getting nervous about a certain team of so-called heroes and my... unique experience...”

“...Of performing unethical experiments and creating general panic...” interjects Tony.

“With extraordinary people,” Ross corrects smoothly, “became highly valuable.”

“I’ll bet,” Tony sneers. “So is that why I’m being kept out of the loop? Because of your _experience_ with me?”

“No, Tony,” Ross says. He sits forward, levelling his gravel-grey eyes on Tony. “That’s why you’re being brought _into_ the loop. I expect that, sometime in the next few weeks, an announcement will be made that I’m taking on the position of Secretary of State. At that point, all of this cloak and dagger manoeuvring will become unnecessary. I’m coming to you now with an opportunity: help me find a way for the Avengers to serve America.”

“Because that’s _not_ what they’ve been doing until now?”

A pink flush rises in Ross’s cheeks. “No it damn well is not,” he snaps. “You were serving SHIELD - who turned out to be HYDRA, let me remind you - and you were serving _yourselves_. You, and those freaks; _experiments_ , and assassins.”

Tony grits his teeth but retains a cool edge to his voice. “I’ll have you know that some of my best friends are freaks and assassins.”

Unexpectedly, Ross laughs. “Oh, Tony. Is that what you think, is that why you bank-roll them? Because you think they’re your _friends_?”

“You wound me.” Tony turns to the door. “Want to call Chuckles in here so I can go back to thinking you’re dead?”

“Sit down,” Ross says, voice quiet yet somehow more commanding for it. “Sit down, son.”

Tony falters. A part of him, a fairly large part, wants to just drop the mic and storm out: serve the smug son of a bitch right. But another part, one that has learned to listen and think (just a little bit), tells him that that neither achieves his objectives nor solves the problem. He stops, takes a deep breath and turns back. Ross is staring at him again, that damned level stare. A final part of Tony realises that walking out is _exactly_ what Ross is hoping for, that this whole reasonable act is designed to make Tony, and by extension, the Avengers, the bad guys. And to hell with that. Tony sits down.

A flash of something that could very well be irritation crosses Ross’s face, but it’s gone too fast to be sure. “When we first met, I didn’t think you stood a cat in hell’s chance of making it out of Howard shadow,” he says. Tony feels a surge of irritation at the accusation, but before he can protest, Ross continues. “I was wrong. When people hear the word Stark, the only thing they think now is ‘Tony’.”

“I’d say ‘thank you’, but...”

“Do you know how many people died in Sokovia? What about New York, Washington, Cape Town, London?” Ross says.

Tony blinks, momentarily caught flat-footed. “A hell of a lot less than would have died if people like me hadn’t been there to stop it,” he says.

“Wrong answer,” Ross barks. “When you stopped dealing in arms you did it because you said Stark weapons had killed soldiers. You didn’t stop to think of all the soldiers they saved, all the lives endangered by having to use sub-standard equipment. So you don’t get to do it here. You want accountability?” He throws a file across the table at Tony. Photographs of casualties spill out, a brutal collage of failure. “ _This_ is accountability. This is the blood on the hands of the people you call friends, the people you finance and support. This is the blood on _your_ hands, Tony.”

Tony wants to argue, wants to defend everything they’ve done, but his throat is dry and tight and the words won’t come. Because as much as it pains Tony to admit it, Ross is right. They can’t ignore the lives that have been lost. “So what would you want me to do?” he says quietly.

“We need to know what people like your associates are doing. And as they’re doing it on your buck, you should want to know that too. All we want is you to share that information.”

“You want me to spy on them?”

“We want you to make sure they’re not abusing the power that you help vest in them,” Ross replies. Again, he sends a file skittering across the table to Tony. Tony flips it open and studies the pictures inside; CCTV of a slender woman who could very well be Natasha in what looks like a European country, a blurry still of a caped man-shape flying over the Hudson, a paparazzi-style telephoto image of Steve in a cafe, dressed in clothes way cooler than Tony has ever seen him wear, and a smile on his face.

“You want me to make sure Captain America isn’t abusing his power to score free donuts in coffee shops?” he sneers. He moves on to the next picture, apparently part of a set. Steve is there again, this time with Sam in the shot. They’re drinking beer. Steve’s in jeans and a hoodie. He looks good. He’s smiling again. The next picture is another cafe, an open-air affair. It’s Steve and Sam again. This time Steve isn’t smiling. His mouth is set in a thin line, his head bowed. Sam’s hand is covering Steve’s.

“Each one of those pictures was taken in a town where there was a report of possible activity by a super-powered individual,” Ross explains. “We think Captain America and this... Eagle fellow...”

“Falcon,” Tony corrects, his voice stretched thin.

“We think they’re acting on these reports. We don’t know why. But if they’re conducting unauthorised investigations, especially where there’s possible criminal activity, it raises questions.”

“Like?”

“Like what they’re hiding.” The bluntness of Ross’s reply hits Tony like a punch to the stomach. “Like if they’re covering up vigilante activity to try and protect a group of people that should be handled by the authorities.”

“Or maybe they’re just two buddies hanging out and trying to have a normal life in between saving your ass?”

Ross shrugs. “Maybe. And if so, there’s nothing to worry about. But this would go a long way to reassuring those people who worry that a group of self-appointed heroes shouldn’t be left to police themselves.”

Tony takes a last look at the photos, eyes tracking over the final one in the stack before closing the dossier and pushing it away from him. He stands.

“Are we done here?”

Ross sighs. “We’re done here. But if you change your mind...”

“I know the secret handshake now?”

A thin smile stretches Ross’s mouth. “You were always more one of us than you were one of them, Tony. I trust you to do the right thing.” He nods, eyes on an elevated spot behind Tony’s head. 

The humourless agent reappears, rather like a man who has been monitoring every word and gesture given in the room. “Mr. Stark,” he says, gesturing at the now-open door.

Tony leads the way back down the blank-walled maze of corridors. The agent’s eyes drift to him several times, and his lips twitch. Years of experience with people desperate to ask him for an autograph have taught Tony to recognise the particular brand of awkward silence they walk in. At the checkpoint, the agent hands back Tony’s phone. He opens his mouth, closes it again. A faint pink flush lights up the tips of his ears.

“Just get it out, big guy,” Tony says, offering him a photo-opportunity smile.

A twitched frown creases the agent’s brow. He clears his throat. “I was actually inter-collegiate improv comedy champion in Grad school,” he grunts.

Tony blinks slowly. “I... literally don’t know what to say to that.”

****

Back in the car, Tony rummages in his glove box to find the small screwdriver DUM-R gave him and uses it to open up the back of his phone. A wry smile tugs at his cheek as he lifts a wafer-thin film of micro-electronics from the battery housing.

“Have to try harder, Ross,” he mutters, closing his now debugged phone back up.

“Where to now, Boss?” asks FRIDAY from the car’s integrated systems.

Tony’s smile softens. “Home, Friday. Take us home.”

****

Tony turns off the shower just in time to hear Steve calling through from the main suite.

“---lo? Tony, is that you?”

Rubbing his hair with a towel, Tony smiles to himself. “No!” he shouts back.

The door to the bathroom bursts open and a worried-looking super-soldier bounds inside, pulling a terribly macho ‘ready-for-anything’ pose.

Tony rolls his eyes. “Of course it’s me, idiot. Who else would it be?”

Steve blushes, delicate pink climbing up his neck and infusing his cheeks. “I didn’t expect you back so soon is all.”

Tony loops the towel about his waist, deliberately low-slung to emphasise the way his torso funnels below the fabric. “I could go?” he suggests. He watches Steve’s eyes follow the lines down, tongue running unconsciously over his lips, and smirks.

“I didn’t say that.” 

The rumble in Steve’s voice flashes heat through Tony. It’s a low and intimate sound, with just a hint of wanton. Not that Tony’s ever shied away from wanton, but it’s _who_ is saying it that makes even a modest dose all the more alluring. With a smug smile he turns his back on Steve, pressing up close to the sink and examining his face in the mirror. He sees Steve come up behind him, feels fingers grip his hips, a single dry digit stroking his damp skin on each side. Steve drops his chin onto Tony’s shoulder, warm breath tickling his cheek.

“My handsome guy,” Steve mutters, pressing a kiss to the angle of his jaw.

A different, altogether more fluttery feeling passes through Tony’s stomach. A slow creep of heat trails up his spine and his ears begin to burn with it. He lets his eyelids droop and leans back into Steve’s body. But even as he does his mind throws up an image; the photo of Steve and Sam, hands clasped. He blinks, trying to diffuse the memory.

“You know,” he says, almost convincingly nonchalantly, “we’ve never actually talked about that.”

Reflected in the mirror, Steve’s brow furrows. “Talked about what?”

“Guys.” Tony replies. The perplexed frown on Steve’s face deepens. “I mean, that _we’re_ both guys.”

“Oh.” Perfect teeth flash in a small, sheepish grin. Steve strokes one hand over Tony’s stomach, up the centre of his chest. “Well, I’m okay with it. And you seemed pretty... okay with it. So I figured...”

“Have there been others?”

Oh God. That really just came out of his mouth, accompanied by the whiniest tone and insecurest little moue imaginable.

Steve blinks and then strong hands are turning Tony, bringing them face to face. Gone are the easy smiles, as Steve stares at him with utter, crushing sincerity. “I’ve cared about other people,” he says quietly. “I’ve... loved people. But this?” He runs his hand down Tony’s side, the skin still damp enough to create friction. “No. There haven’t been any others.”

Tony knows the little pout on Steve’s lips well enough that he should be kissing away the insecurities there, but there’s a tug in his chest, a feeling of unease. He side-steps, breaking Steve’s caress and putting a slip of space between them.

“Maybe I should let you get a shower while I fix us both up a drink?” he suggests.

“Okay,” says Steve with an almost imperceptible sigh. 

The disappointment in that single word is so palpable that regret surges through Tony. He reaches out, running a finger over the hem of Steve’s tight top, dipping just below the top of his pants. “I could also assemble myself in a provocative position on your couch?” he offers.

A laugh, only a tiny bit forced, breaks free of Steve’s mouth. “Then I’ll make sure I’m real quick about it,” he says.

Tony saunters out into the main part of the suite - technically _Steve’s_ suite, although he’s spent more time in it than his own - and sets about blending the pair of them a delicious beverage from the collection of fruit and vegetables he finds in the table-top fridge. He obviously skips the kale that Steve ladles into everything, but concedes to the spirulina powder he discovers in a little tub beside the blender. He hears the shower start up and takes the opportunity to pulse the mixture into a suitably smooth juice. He lets it sit and goes for a mooch about the room. Over on the bedside table he spies Steve’s mobile and a thought comes to him.

“Hey, Steve?”

A vague humming noise emanates from the bathroom, and it strikes Tony that not a lot of people will have ever considered that Captain America sings just as badly as they do in the shower. He tries again.

“Steve, did you take your phone with you to the subcommittee meeting last month?”

“What?” Steve shouts back over the sound of the water hitting ceramic and skin. A beat later he answers. “Yeah.”

“They make you leave it anywhere?”

“Uh... yeah. Said it was a closed hearing. No technology allowed.”

Tony clicks his tongue quietly and takes the phone over to the chair he left his clothes slung over. He manages to unscrew it with the edge of his thumbnail, flips open the case and taps out the battery. There in the well is the same micro-electronic film that Ross tried to plant on him, no doubt having been reading and transmitting everything in and out of the device for the better part of a fortnight. He goes to remove it, but...

But.

He rummages behind himself, finding his own phone in his jacket pocket. He pulls it out and flicks in on, the blue glow bright in the lowly-lit room.

“Hey boss, you need something?” FRIDAY asks as the link to his personal network is resumed.

A silent argument rages inside Tony’s head. “Yeah,” he says after a pause. “There’s foreign tech in Steve’s phone.”

“You want me to fry it?”

Tony licks his lips. “No. I want you to create an interceptor programme. Filter everything. Take out anything that could be sensitive, anything personal. Pass along generic data; location, cell connection.”

“Wouldn’t it be better if I just got rid of it?”

Tony shakes his head. “If we do that, the person at the other end will know they’ve been cut off. I don’t want to tip them off before I have to.”

It’s not a lie, even if it isn’t the whole truth.

Tony thinks he hears a slight note of distain in FRIDAY’s tone as she next speaks. “And do you want a copy of the data?” she asks.

Tony pauses, longer this time. “No,” he says at last. “Keep it on the system, but I don’t need to see it. Not unless...”

From the bathroom, he hears the shower turn off and tucks his phone back away. Steve wanders out, towel looped about his waist and his hair freshly roughed into a delightful muss. He shoots a shy smile over to Tony, but then a tiny frown creases his brow. He walks over to the chair.

“That mine?” he asks, tone light but eyes just very slightly pinched.

“Yeah,” Tony says casually. He holds it out for Steve to take. “Just installing a software update for you. I know how useless you are at keeping it up to date.”

Steve hums, neither assent nor dissent as he takes the phone, passing it from one hand to the other in order to keep hold of Tony’s fingers. He glances just once at the screen and tosses it onto the couch. Then he stoops, lifting Tony’s hand to meet his mouth, and kisses Tony’s palm with soft lips and just a hint of bristle on his jaw.

Tony feels heat in his cheeks and that swirly, almost slightly sick feeling of fondness and bashfulness set up in his stomach. He’s never blushed so much as he does with Steve; there’s something terribly tender in his slow smiles and private displays of affection.

Steve lets Tony’s hand go with a trail of fingers and moves off into the kitchen. He lifts the blender from its housing, flips the lid and gives it a sniff. He ducks down, rummaging in the cupboard for glasses. Tony takes the opportunity to avail himself of a clean pair of trunks and a tee from the bedside cabinet. It’s not that he has a lot of clothes stashed here, but it’s only sensible to keep the basics to hand. 

He turns around to find Steve behind him, silent in bare feet. Steve holds out a tumbler of juice which Tony accepts with a smile.

“So,” Steve begins with a slight drawl in his tone. “Are you going to tell me how it went today?”

Tony takes a quick sip of his drink, then offers a shrug. “Nothing much to say.”

A slight purse in Steve’s lips reveals his frustration. “I guess I thought with you coming back here...”

“I just figured I needed to split my time a bit better,” Tony replies casually. “No matter how important it is to have a voice on the hill, there are other things I care about too.” He steps closer, chin lifting to accommodate Steve’s greater height. His cheek ticks in a smile. “I mean, there’s DUM-E and DUM-R, and it’s been weeks since I put in any time in the garage...”

Steve’s eyes narrow, but a little huff of a laugh breaks past his lips and Tony strokes a finger down the dip of his stomach.

“And I _guess_ there are a few other possible reasons,” Tony adds. He sees Steve’s pupils widen, proximity letting him catch the way the other man’s breath gathers. “Unless...” he says, voice low and teasing, “there’s some reason you don’t want me around?”

Steve puts a large hand to Tony’s hip, pulls them together. “What reason could I possibly have?” he says, dipping his head to press a kiss to where Tony’s neck meets his shoulder.

Tony shrugs again, but tips his head to give Steve better access. “Oh, I dunno. Dangerous training exercises. Poor nutritional choices. Secret missions with other teammates?” He keeps his voice light, a joking tone.

Steve pulls back and considers him, gaze flicking over Tony’s face. His expression is one of vague amusement but Tony thinks he sees a furtive glimmer in those blue eyes. “Like I could ever hide anything from you,” he says. He returns his attention to Tony’s collar, fingers straying under the hem of his t-shirt, the glass in his right hand a cold press of sensation against Tony’s side.

A slight, rueful chuckle escapes Tony, even as he responds to the touch. “Oh, you probably could if you _really_ tried,” he says.


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here we are at the end. I'd like to thank everyone that's read. There's some more notes at the end, so for now I'll just say 'I hope you enjoy'.

The sun is warm, teetering on hot, but the air is damp with salt sea spray and a light breeze stirs Steve’s hair. He closes his eyes and turns up his face, feeling the skin warm in the direct light. The gentle murmur of waves on a stony beech comes not far to his right, the multi-lingual chatter of people passing the street-front cafe he sits in, the whirr of the electric vehicles that go about their business on this Tuesday afternoon.

He startles just slightly as fingers link through his, eyes opening to look at Tony, who sits in a t-shirt and baseball cap, a grin on his face.

“I can’t believe we came all this way just to get a burger,” Steve says, giving Tony’s hand a little return squeeze.

Tony’s grin widens. “Hey, Amuk doesn’t just make burgers. He makes art in beef.”

Steve rolls his eyes. Tony and his definition of ‘art’ varies somewhat, but it has to be said that the man knows his burgers. “Even so, flying us half way around the world, on a commercial airliner I might add, is eccentric even for you.”

“It’s not like I made us fly coach,” Tony argues, wrinkling his nose. “We had those cosy little bunks...”

A little wash of heat that has nothing to do with the beating Asiatic sun infuses Steve’s cheeks. “Even still...”

Tony sighs. “I just... I wanted to take you on a date. A proper date. Somewhere we could relax, be a.... be together. Just you and me.”

Steve feels himself soften, an intense fondness for this ridiculous man flooding him. “That’s why you made us leave our phones back in New York?”

“Uh, yeah,” Tony says, taking a sip of his iced tea. “We’ve got the emergency transponder if there’s anything the team really can’t handle on their own.”

“The team will be fine,” Steve says, only very slightly defensively.

“Exactly,” agrees Tony. “So will you just enjoy the moment?”

And he’s right. It’s nice. For the first few hours after they landed, Steve waited for someone to recognise them: for the furtive glances, whispers and little nudges that follow him almost everywhere. But no-one has. Here, in this little island nation in the Andaman Sea, he and Tony are just two more American tourists. 

He takes a mouthful of his own drink. “You know,” he says after he swallows, “the way Clint talks about Madripoor, I was expecting something different. He always says nothing good ever happens here.”

Tony shrugs. “It’s like everywhere else, there’s good and bad. Things in Lowtown are better than they were, but it’s still not somewhere you’d want to find yourself after dark. They take the idea of free trade to pretty serious extremes - legal or illegal, as a buyer you’re protected here. They have some of the tightest laws surrounding personal privacy. You know, it’s considered the height of bad manners here to ask a person their name. You either know it, or it’s up to them whether they tell you.”

“Sounds like a system that could easily be exploited.”

“Aren’t they all?” Tony says flippantly. “But even so, Madripoor has some of the most progressive civil rights of any independent nation. Funded healthcare, a minimum wage...

Steve takes another drink, listening to Tony talk.

“...and they were the first country on the Asian sub-continent to legalise same-sex marriage...”

Steve sucks in a breath, simultaneous to trying to swallow, and various tubes, gasses and fluids get all mixed up in his chest. He splutters, trying not to react _exactly_ like it looks like he’s reacting to what Tony just said, which only results in him choking more noticeably.

Mercifully, a waiter takes that moment to appear bearing two plates groaning under a quite monstrous portion of burger and fries. The smell of sautéed onions wafts over the table, and Steve’s mouth and eyes vie for which wants to water the most. Tony looks at him with mild amusement, seemingly unconcerned by Steve’s response to the word _marriage_. But then, looking unconcerned about things that concern him deeply is a Tony Stark special, and...

And...

Steve decides to focus on his meal.

They make small-talk as they eat. Tony recounts DUM-R’s latest antics, a glimmer of pride lighting his amber eyes. He tries to explain a new theory the lab guys have been working on but, to be honest, it’s all a little over Steve’s head. Something about quantum packets and unlimited energy. He nods at the appropriate points, though, admiring the way Tony’s face comes alive, gestures wild and expansive. His enthusiasm is infectious, and Steve finds himself just watching his animated features, the wide, easy grins he throws Steve’s way.

“There something wrong with your food?” Tony asks, cutting into his own monologue.

Steve blinks, suddenly aware that he’s stopped eating in favour of listening to Tony talk. With an embarrassed cough, he picks up a fry and dips it in some ketchup before popping it in his mouth. “No, it’s really good. I was, uh, just...”

Tony smiles, somewhere between knowing and bashful. “So what about you?” he says. “Any side projects on the go?”

“Uh...”

Over Tony’s shoulder, something catches Steve’s attention; the glint of sun on something metallic. He looks up and his gaze is immediately captured by a pair of familiar, grey-green eyes, staring at him from across the street.

His heart pounds. 

It’s Bucky, unmistakeable even in the unfamiliar clothes. Steve is caught between frozen shock and the urge to bolt, to run straight at him. But he knows how foolish that would be and likely how futile. He’s chased his friend across half a continent and never caught so much as a glimpse. And here he is, thousands of miles from home, just standing there. Steve’s body tenses, torn between the two conflicting desires. Slowly, Bucky shakes his head and somehow Steve knows what he’s saying. _‘I’ll wait’_.

“Hey? Steve?”

Steve pulls his gaze back to Tony’s face.

“You alright, there?”

Steve wills his breathing back to normal. “Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, of course. Sorry. Touch of jetlag, I guess.”

“Is that your way of saying you want to go to bed?” Tony asks with a smirk.

“What?”

Tony chuckles. “Nothing. I was asking if you’ve been up to anything special.”

“Like what?”

“Well,” Tony drawls, sitting back casually, “Like one of the guys told me you and Sam took a trip off base while I was in DC last week. I just wondered if it was anything I should know about.”

A tingling creep crawls up Steve’s neck. He risks a glimpse over Tony’s shoulder to where Buck had been. He’s not there anymore, but there is a narrow alley leading from the main street and he’d bet ten to a dime that’s where Bucky is hiding.

“No,” Steve says. “We just went to visit a couple of his buddies in Maine.”

Tony’s lips twitch into the faintest pout. “Uh huh. You two spend quite a bit of time together, don’t you?”

“Well, we’re friends and...”

It hits Steve all at once. He’d blame it on being distracted, but the truth is he’s just never been good with this type of thing; seeing in others what he barely understands in himself. “Tony, do you think there’s something going on with me and Sam?” he says quietly.

Tony pushes his plate further in to the table and folds his arms. “He’s a good looking guy,” he says. “And you do get kinda twitchy whenever I mention him.”

A burst of irritation mixes with regret in Steve’s chest. Sometimes he forgets that Tony is one of the few people who doesn’t buy into his own hype. At his core, Tony is deeply uncertain of things. He _cares_ so much about those around him but never quite believes they feel the same for him. It’s frustrating, because Steve knows they do. 

But maybe he has some cause to feel that way. Even if there’s nothing between him and Sam in the way Tony is suggesting, they are hiding something from him. Steve knows he should tell Tony about Buck. But it’s... complicated. Even putting aside the possibility that HYDRA was involved with the death of Tony’s parents, his attitude has shifted of late. He’s been talking more and more about the need for them to operate within a framework of oversight, to have a clear path of accountability for their actions. What worries Steve is that ‘accountability’ is synonymous for ‘blame’ in Tony’s vocabulary. He knows he blames himself for what happened in Sokovia, and for the failings of his company before he pulled them out of weapons manufacturing. They all carry guilt for one thing or another, but Tony wears his fresher and brighter than the rest.

For that reason if no other, Steve knows he can’t give Tony the full truth. But he at least owes him honesty.

“It’s... awkward,” he says. “You and I... we got together before he came on board. And I know we said we’d keep this quiet, that there would be too many questions if people knew we’re together but... I had to tell him, Tony. With you around more, I think he kind of guessed but... I told him. About us.”

Steve watches the play of thoughts on Tony’s face. The narrowing of his eyes, the dip in his bow. A slight flare in his nostrils as though he might laugh. A pout. A slow flush. Then at last, he reaches out and takes Steve’s hand once more.

“Steve, I didn’t... when I said to keep our relationship away from prying eyes, I didn’t mean it had to be a secret from our friends. Rhodey, Pepper, Happy... they all know. Hell, I...” A flash of pain crosses Tony’s eyes and his fingers clench a little tighter around Steve’s. “I even went to where my folks are buried. Sat at their graveside and told ‘em. Not that I expect dad would have looked too kindly on it, but I figure my mom would want to know that I...” He trails off, head dipped ever so slightly.

“Tony, I... I don’t know what to say.”

A slight smile tugs Tony’s cheek. “Just tell me the two of you aren’t dance partners.”

Despite himself, Steve laughs quietly. “No. We are most certainly not dance partners. Sam does not ‘dance’. With guys, at least.”

Relief rings out like a church bell on Tony’s face. “In that case,” he says, “How about I settle the bill and you and me go investigate the balcony Jacuzzi at the hotel?”

“I... yes,” Steve answers, less glibly than he’d like. “But I’m uh... just going to visit the bathroom first.”

Tony throws a napkin over his plate and gets to his feet. “No rush. I’m going to catch up with Amuk. I haven’t seen much of him the last couple of years. Funnily enough, I’ve been kinda busy.” He saunters off into the interior of the restaurant, calling out in a dialect of Malay that Steve had no idea he spoke.

Steve trails behind him, splitting off to enter the little Captain’s room. He’d already spotted there was a wide-open window leading from it out onto the side street. It perhaps doesn’t say the most flattering things about him that before he even looked at the menu, he could already list five points of ingress and egress to the brightly-painted restaurant.

Catching sight of himself in a gilt-framed mirror, Steve takes a deep breath. He knows he shouldn’t do this. He knows that it’s selfish, that Tony has gone to not inconsiderable effort to bring them both here, to give them one normal day together. But he also knows that he has to. That after all the chasing, he can’t waste this opportunity. Not again.

He sets his shoulders, pushes the window to its maximum angle, and vaults the wall in one practiced move.

****

He makes his way from the side street, across the main road and into the alley, moving with a casualness that belies the tight coil of nerves in his stomach. The sun is at too great an angle to make it between the high-sided buildings, and air conditioning vents pump out odour-laden steam into the narrow space. But there, leaning against a metal dumpster, is Bucky.

“Close enough,” Bucky growls as Steve comes within five paces of him.

All the air leaves Steve. “Buck...”

“I don’t know how much of their programming is left in me. You’re better keeping your distance.”

Steve takes a small, faltering step further forward.

“Any closer and I leave,” Bucky cautions.

Steve forces himself to a halt, forcing harsh control over muscles that are begging to carry him forward. “What are you doing here, Buck?”

A strange look pulls at Bucky’s sombre face, almost but not quite the ghost of that devil-may-care smile Steve remembers so well. “Not the thing same as you, buddy,” he says.

Steve’s heart surges in his chest. “What do you mean?” he asks tightly.

Bucky scrunches up his nose. “You’re here with that guy. The showboat.”

Irritation cuts into Steve’s nervous excitement. “Is the problem that I’m with a guy, or that that guy is Tony Stark?”

“I just figured, you and that dame...” Again, that whisper of the man Steve knew all those years ago passes across Bucky’s face.

“Her name was... is... Peggy,” Steve says softly.

“You were sweet on her.”

It’s all too much. There are too many memories, feelings that Steve long since thought settled burn through him now like the freshest wound.

“I... I loved her,” he says, voice unsteady and raw in his throat. “I still do.”

Bucky pushes himself up from the dumpster. His eyes lock onto Steve’s, cool and grey; a cloud in them once more. “And your guy there?”

Steve’s breath catches at Bucky’s blunt question. He’s never actually said it. Neither of them have. Well, that’s not quite true. It’s a word that Tony bandies about more than Steve is comfortable with. Never in that context, however: those three direct words. Maybe that’s why he never has. Maybe he was making up for Tony’s over-use. Maybe he didn’t think it was something he needed to say. 

Maybe he just didn’t _think_. 

He licks his dry lips. “Yeah, I do,” he answers quietly.

“Is that why you’re lying to him?”

The words are a slap. “What do you mean?”

Bucky reaches inside his jacket. Steve tenses, but Bucky pulls out a blocky cell phone. He presses a few buttons and the inside pocket of Steve’s jacket begins to vibrate.

Heat floods Steve’s cheeks. “So that’s it,” he says. “You’re here to remind me I’m a jackass, just like always.”

Bucky shakes his head, hair falling into his face but unable to hide the small smile playing across his curved lips. “I’m here because I know you’ve been looking for me, and I know you won’t stop. But you have to, for both our sakes.”

Steve moves closer, almost within arm’s reach, before he can stop himself. Bucky doesn’t bolt, but he seems to draw in on himself.

“I’m not the person I used to be,” Bucky says, barely above a whisper. “But I’m not _not_ him, either. I know it, and you know it. Thing is, I want to find who I am. You want to find the guy I was.”

Steve goes to protest, but Bucky cuts him off with a sharp jerk of his head.

“So I’m going to offer you a deal. I have your number...” he taps his head, “in here. I will call you once a week on it. Don’t bother to call back, I’ll ditch the phone as soon as I’ve hung up. But that way you’ll know I’m okay, and you don’t need to come running.”

“And if you don’t call?” Steve asks.

The trace of fondness on Bucky’s face returns, but it’s hollow; a skull-mask smile. “If I stop calling, then I’m not him anymore, and I’m not me anymore. In that case, you let me go.”

“Buck, I...”

“I need you to promise, Stevie,” Bucky says. And it’s pure Bucky, down to the rhythm of his voice, that Brooklyn twang you don’t hear any more.

“I...” Steve’s chest is tight. He’s desperate to close these final few feet, hold Bucky tight and not let him go. Instead he closes his eyes. “I promise.”

“You always were a better man than me,” Bucky says.

Steve takes a deep breath and opens his eyes again, staring into his friend’s face, mapping the familiar shape of it alongside the unfamiliar lines. “You remember that?” he asks.

Bucky shrugs. “Well, weren’t you?”

A half-smile ticks Steve’s mouth. “I was the punk kid you were always pulling out of trouble.”

Bucky’s head dips, and Steve knows that’s it: that one of them has to turn and leave now. But as he senses movement in the other man, he can’t stop himself speaking again.

“Buck... Be careful, okay?” he says. “If you’re leaving this life behind, then leave it behind. No more stings on Hydra, no more rescue missions. Tony doesn’t tell me everything that happens on the hill, but I know trouble’s coming for people like you and me.”

Bucky looks back over his shoulder, an expression of such pure pity on his face that it turns Steve’s heart cold. “I hope for your sake all it is is trouble,” he says.

Steve licks his lips. “What else could it be?” he asks quietly.

Bucky walks away, and is almost out of earshot when he replies. 

“ _War_.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What?! I didn't *not* set myself up to write a Civil War sequel?
> 
> Well, look. I'm off to see the film on Friday, and at that point I'll have to see how broken I am. It'd be really great though to hear if you'd like a follow up. This piece was roughly five months in the making, so it's something I really do invest in.
> 
> Either way, again, my sincere thanks for reading.
> 
> OT.


End file.
